There is no credible scenario in which expansion at Heathrow can go ahead without blowing a hole in the UK’s legally binding climate targets, new modeling published today by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at The University of Manchester reveals.
The report, commissioned by the environmental justice organization Friends of the Earth, provides the first detailed analysis of whether Heathrow expansion is compatible with the UK’s legal carbon budgets.
Recent approvals of airport expansion at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and many other locations mean that UK aviation is already projected to exceed its share of the Seventh Carbon Budget (2038–42) by between 21% and 50%, depending on how much sustainable aviation fuel materializes. That is before any Heathrow expansion takes place.
The analysis concludes that the two technologies relied on to allow passenger growth or airport expansion to fit within carbon budgets—sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and greenhouse gas removals (GGR)—are not even close to being on track for sufficient capacity within the required time frame.
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