Letter from NGOs: “All 3 of the Airports Commission’s shortlisted options would increase CO2 emissions”
Any new runway would increase CO2 emissions and make the UK’s climate change commitments much more difficult to achieve. The Commission has assumed that emissions will be somehow constrained, but has remained silent on what policy measures would achieve this in practice. A new runway would necessitate some combination of new taxes, limits on regional airport growth, and additional burdens on other sectors to cut emissions beyond the very challenging reductions already required. The NGOs are calling on all parties to make manifesto commitments that they would not permit the building of a new runway that will violate climate targets, exacerbate noise or air pollution, or damage wildlife and the British countryside. Whoever leads the next government will need to judge the recommendations of the Airports Commission in this context before deciding whether to build a new runway anywhere in the South East. (From AEF, FoE, Greenpeace, RSPB, WWF)
.
Tweet
Airport expansion
November 14 2014 (Published in the Times)
All three of the Airports Commission’s shortlisted options would increase carbon dioxide emissions
Sir,
The Airports Commission’s assessment of expansion proposals at Heathrow and Gatwick (“Air fares to rise as new runways run billions over budget”, Nov 11) will inevitably be followed by debate about which proposal is “the least bad” in terms of noise, air pollution and public cost. But any of the three shortlisted options would increase carbon dioxide emissions and make the UK’s climate change commitments much more difficult to achieve.
The commission has assumed that emissions will be somehow constrained, but has remained silent on what policy measures would achieve this in practice. A new runway would necessitate some combination of new taxes, limits on regional airport growth, and additional burdens on other sectors to cut emissions beyond the very challenging reductions already required.
We are calling on all parties to make manifesto commitments that no airport expansion will violate climate targets, exacerbate noise or air pollution, or damage wildlife and the British countryside. Whoever leads the next government will need to judge the recommendations of the Airports Commission in this context before deciding whether to build a new runway anywhere in the South East.
Cait Hewitt, Aviation Environment Federation;
Andrew Pendleton, Friends of the Earth;
Martin Harper, RSPB;
Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK;
Ben Stafford, WWF-UK.
Printed in the TImes at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/letters/article4266970.ece
.
.
Airports Commission publishes appraisals of Heathrow and Gatwick expansion options
The airports don’t know how much it would cost to build a new runway
The main story to emerge in the press has been the fact that all three of the scheme proposers underestimated the cost of building a new runway with Gatwick underestimating their costs by £2 billion (total cost of £9.3 billion), and Heathrow underestimating their costs by £3.8 billion (total cost £18.6 billion). It is still not clear exactly how much the costs of building a runway would be financed by public money, which we raised as a major concern in our recent blog.
Passengers would pay for a new runway
Another key issue to emerge from the Airports Commission’s appraisals is the fact that landing fees at either airport would have to increase to pay for the runway and these costs would be transferred to passengers. At Gatwick, passengers could be expected to pay an average of £15-18 for landing fees compared to £8 today. At Heathrow, the costs would rise from £20 today to £28-29 (with a peak of £32 on top of your ticket). Such price increases, as we highlighted in our report earlier in the year, would challenge the commitment of budget airlines to using Gatwick airport. The landing fees would be considerably higher than the rate of Air Passenger Duty on a shorthaul ticket.
A new runway could mean more people are affected by noise
At Gatwick, the number of people overflown would double according to the Airports Commission. The Heathrow Hub proposal, which had the main selling point of lower noise impacts than Heathrow’s proposed North West runway, would in fact also increase the numbers exposed to noise. If a North West runway was built at Heathrow, the noise impact would be less clear according to the Commission’s analysis, with numbers exposed to night noise potentially reducing while the number exposed to daytime noise could grow (compared with a no-expansion scenario).
A new runway would have ‘adverse’ impacts on local air quality
The sustainability appraisal of either a new or extended Heathrow runway describes the impact on local air quality as ‘significantly adverse’ and says it would pose a risk to local air quality levels. At Gatwick, the impact on local air quality is described as ‘adverse’. Both pose a risk of breaching legal limits on air quality.
The Airports Commission doesn’t consider carbon costs
The Airports Commission’s analysis of the wider economic impact of expansion fails to reflect the full carbon costs. These costs, according to the Commission would ‘dominate’ the economic appraisal of the schemes. The Airports Commission also acknowledges that it hasn’t considered what policies would be needed to restrict growth of emissions to the level they use in each stage of their analysis.