It’s important to get things into context. Despite some of the headlines, the EAC has not pulled back on Heathrow’s third runway but has talked about the challenges involved in getting to net-zero by 2050, alongside growth in UK aviation.
Nonetheless, I would urge the Committee’s membership to consider 3 key points.
- Between now and 2050 trade and travel in aviation is only going to increase, regardless of what happens at Heathrow. People are not about to stop going abroad for their holidays (if anything their desire to travel in a more interconnected world is only increasing) and international trade will continue to grow. The need and desire to get people aid, medicines and trade around the globe will only grow – that means if they don’t travel through Heathrow (the UK’s only hub for global destinations) they will go through other hubs like Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, and have a more staccato (and more carbon emitting) journey.
- By failing to take this opportunity to grow Heathrow, the UK will walk away from a £12 billion boost (nearly 0.5% of GDP) to the UK economy. That is money that no-doubt members of EAC would like to see invested into decarbonization initiatives, as well as public services. Failure to deliver the new runway would mean giving up on over 100,000 new jobs, thousands of apprenticeships and around £50 billion of private sector investment in UK infrastructure.
- Finally, there is a real danger of the EAC being pushed around by environmental fundamentalists who constantly catastrophize against long-term plans to cut carbon emissions. That kind of thinking a hundred years ago would have banned all cars. But here we are in 2025, with electric cars becoming the norm. Technological advance is speeding up - ever more exponential in an AI driven world. In all likelihood, it will lead us to plucking carbon out of the sky before 2050. The EAC will have sceptics in their ears saying a fully deliverable plan must be ready right now, as a baseline. They must be more realistic. There is a plan which can be found right here: Home | Sustainable Aviation.
Yes, there are some vagaries in it, tied to innovation and scale up. But the speed of change in this field is breathtaking so we can be confident it will be delivered within that quarter of a century that takes us to the 2050 Paris target. Hydrogen, electric flight and SAF will all have a role to play. The EAC could do a lot worse than visit Twelve | A World Made from Air™ and learn about what they are already doing, and the major contracts that airlines (including IAG) have signed with them for SAF. This generation of SAF uses carbon capture, the appliance of an electric current to water (with renewable energy) to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen and fuses it to the captured carbon to create SAF. The next generation will pluck carbon from the air.
As I said at the outset the EAC has not pulled back on Heathrow’s new runway. It should focus its attention on innovative opportunities to cut carbon, whilst supporting economic growth.
Parmjit Dhanda
Executive Director
Back Heathrow