New AEF briefing: Why Heathrow can’t solve its carbon problem (and the trouble with offsets)

The Government and Heathrow are trying to pretend that adding a 3rd runway, increasing the number of flights by around 50% (many or most to long-haul destinations) somehow is not a climate change impact problem. Now in an excellent new briefing from the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), “Why Heathrow can’t solve its carbon problem (and the trouble with offsets”, they explain how the carbon emissions cannot just be wished away and there are no mechanisms currently proposed to properly deal with them. Heathrow has a “roadmap” on how it aspires to be “carbon neutral”. AEF says the roadmap “does little more than recycle existing – inadequate – measures to limit aviation emissions” and their briefing sets out why the plan falls short. AEF says: “…almost all the proposed actions involve Heathrow riding on the coattails of other Government or industry initiatives.” … and “The kind of offsetting that CORSIA will deliver …isn’t designed to deliver a zero emissions target but instead to reduce emissions, at best, to half of what they might have been. … the idea that offsetting makes a tonne of CO2 from aviation “neutral” is misleading.”
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New AEF briefing: Why Heathrow can’t solve its carbon problem (and the trouble with offsets)

Earlier this month the Government’s Spring Statement announced plans to consult on whether airlines (and other travel providers) should be required to offer passengers the opportunity to voluntarily offset their carbon emissions, claiming this would give people the option of “zero carbon travel”.

On a day when the Government was defending itself in court against claims that its plans for expansion at Heathrow unlawfully fail to account for climate change, the announcement seemed tokenistic. Voluntary offsetting, even when offered by airlines, has a very low take-up rate, and its role in delivering the shift needed to a zero carbon economy is in any case questionable.

Heathrow Airport, meanwhile, is working on the assumption that the third runway is going ahead, and in December last year published a “Carbon neutral growth roadmap”. The airport’s idea of a carbon neutral runway, when it was floated last year, was hailed by some prominent environmentalists as demonstrating real forward thinking, and Ed Gillespie, writing for sustainability consultancy Futerra, described it as “a huge, bold and courageous aspiration”.

Publication of the roadmap may, in fact, be more a question of expediency. If the third runway plans survive legal challenge, Heathrow, as the developer, will need to be able to demonstrate that the project will not have a “material impact” on the Government’s ability to meet its climate change commitments.

In fact, however, Heathrow’s carbon neutral growth roadmap does little more than recycle existing – inadequate – measures to limit aviation emissions. Our new briefing, “Why Heathrow can’t solve its carbon problem (6 pages) sets out why the plan falls short.

https://www.aef.org.uk/2019/03/26/new-aef-briefing-why-heathrow-cant-solve-its-carbon-problem-and-the-trouble-with-offsets/

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The AEF Briefing says:

In December 2018, Heathrow published a “carbon neutral growth roadmap”1 setting out the airport’s plans in relation to the emissions from a third runway

This short paper sets out our concerns about the roadmap, namely that:

• Its target – of ‘neutralising’ any growth in CO2 emissions from the airport once a third runway opens – appears designed to smooth the way for runway expansion rather than to meet the real climate challenge

• It very largely repackages existing industry and government initiatives on climate change

• The idea that offsetting makes a tonne of CO2 from aviation “neutral” is misleading; if an offset pays for an emissions reduction that needs to happen anyway then that tonne of CO2 emitted from the aircraft will still cause warming and be inconsistent with a “net zero” climate goal

• It creates the impression that the airport has figured out how we can fly more without adding to the climate problem, when in fact far more radical solutions than any included in Heathrow’s roadmap will be needed to ensure that the aviation sector is compatible with net zero emissions as required by the Paris Agreement.

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A few extracts from the briefing:

 

A carbon neutral growth aspiration was included in Heathrow’s “2.0” sustainability strategy published in December 2017 – six months before the critical vote on the third runway – but with no detail about what the commitment related to or how it would be delivered.

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Even before the court has reached a judgement on the five legal challenges5 to the third runway proposal (including two focussing exclusively on its climate change impacts), Heathrow has begun drafting and consulting on its Development Consent Order application, the airport’s plan for delivering the third runway scheme as set out in the Airports National Policy Statement (NPS).

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There’s nothing new being offered [by the Heathrow roadmap].

Delivery of the carbon neutral pledge will in fact require almost no action from Heathrow. While many of the initiatives described are worthwhile, there is hardly anything in the plan that is additional to what’s happening anyway: almost all the proposed actions involve Heathrow riding on the coattails of other Government or industry initiatives.

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Current actions are not enough

Giving moral support to the actions already underway on climate change would be fine if the sum of those actions amounted to a comprehensive plan to tackle the aviation emissions challenge. But Heathrow’s ‘plan’, as outlined in the (box above), fails to make clear all the ways in which these measures fall short.

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Biofuels are only beneficial for the climate if the land needed to grow them is not better used in other ways, and it’s unlikely they’ll be available in any significant quantity once appropriate environmental controls are put in place (for example preventing palm oil being used for transport in the UK).

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CORSIA

But it would be dangerous to regard it as in any way able to “neutralise” the growth in aviation emissions, let alone the vast bulk of emissions that would be left outside of the scheme, given the myriad of shortcomings in how it has been set up. Its goal is currently not aligned to the Paris Agreement or even to previous agreements of the UNFCCC; it has no long-term target, and is envisaged to run only until 2035; it addresses emissions only above their level in 2020 (emissions below that level are not accounted for); it does not have full global support (China has yet to confirm whether or not it will participate, and the voluntary phase between 2021 and 2026 will cover only around three-quarters of eligible emissions); and it is built on an unrealistic assumption that there will be a long term supply of cheap offset credits (decisions have yet to be taken on the likely units that will be eligible and how credible they are).

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Offsetting doesn’t make the emissions go away

The kind of offsetting that CORSIA will deliver, by contrast, isn’t designed to deliver a zero emissions target but instead to reduce emissions, at best, to half of what they might have been. In this context, the idea that offsetting makes a tonne of CO2 from aviation “neutral” is misleading; if an offset pays for an emissions reduction that needs to happen anyway then that tonne of CO2 emitted from the aircraft will still cause warming and be inconsistent with a “net zero” climate goal.

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The kind of offsetting that CORSIA will deliver, by contrast, isn’t designed to deliver a zero emissions target but instead to reduce emissions, at best, to half of what they might have been. In this context, the idea that offsetting makes a tonne of CO2 from aviation “neutral” is misleading; if an offset pays for an emissions reduction that needs to happen anyway then that tonne of CO2 emitted from the aircraft will still cause warming and be inconsistent with a “net zero” climate goal.

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AEF concludes:

A step in the right direction? Or a dangerously misleading offer of comfort?

And that’s why pretending to have answers on how to make airport expansion compatible with climate change ambition – even pretending to have them in reach – is so dangerous. Airport expansion is a long-term investment; the economic case for Heathrow expansion assumed at least sixty years of operation. Illusory ambitions on climate change can make it look as though aviation growth isn’t a problem. If we’re to have a chance of preventing the worst climate impacts we need an honest conversation about the problems. Heathrow’s carbon neutral roadmap doesn’t help.

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Read the full briefing at 

https://www.aef.org.uk/uploads/2019/03/Why-Heathrow-can%E2%80%99t-solve-its-carbon-problem-.pdf

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See also:

Open letter from 90 academics to European governments – carbon offset markets (eg. CORSIA) will not effectively cut carbon

There is an interesting letter from 90 academics calling for governments to withdraw support from new carbon offset markets – with a specific reference to the UN Corsia scheme for aviation emissions. The academics call on European governments that care about climate change to withdraw their support for the creation of a new doomed carbon offset market at the COP25 this December. The proposals for carbon offsets are entirely unable to meet necessary criteria, needed to ensure they actually succeed in “offsetting” carbon. The letter says: “Yet, beyond the well-known issues of excess permits and frauds, it has also been demonstrated that carbon markets have major conceptual flaws that cannot be fixed, such as the inability to provide a reliable price signal or the fact that the climate impact of offset projects is not calculable….It is well documented that carbon markets have failed spectacularly in achieving their environmental objectives and that many carbon offset projects have a devastating social impact. In spite of this evidence, carbon markets remain the main policy tool to address climate change in Europe, based on the misguided hope that they will work “once the price is right”.”

Click here to view full story…

An assessment by Carbon Market Watch of credit providers for the aviation offsetting scheme

Carbon Market Watch has produced a report that assesses credit providers for the ICAO CORSIA carbon offsetting scheme – which aims to compensate the growth in CO2 emissions from international aviation above 2020 levels, starting in 2021. Offsets should ” offset programs will be screened against the eleven new Program Design Elements,” (one of which, for example, is: “Program Governance: Programs should publicly disclose who is responsible for administration of the program and how decisions are made.”   Carbon Market Watch conclude that “no program can yet operate in a manner which complies with all the eligibility criteria. Some will need to update and improve certain parts of their protocols or methodologies, but all are hampered by the lack of clarity on international accounting rules to avoid double counting of emission reductions. The present assessment also highlights that the Program Design Elements are not sufficient to exclude credits with no environmental value, and that a rigorous application of the second set of criteria, the Carbon Offset Credit Integrity Assessment Criteria, is necessary and will require analysis of specific methodologies and projects.”

Click here to view full story…

2019 Spring Statement – how getting passengers to pay for carbon offsets is not the answer

In the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, there was a mention of launching a call for evidence on offsetting transport emissions, in the hope of encouraging more travels (not only air passengers) in a vain attempt to “neutralise” their climate impact. Hammond said this would explore how travel providers – including airlines – could potentially be required to “offer genuinely additional carbon offsets so that customers who want zero carbon travel have that option can be confident about additionality”. Some airlines already offer offset schemes alongside flight bookings, but take-up is about 1%. So they are not working. The Aviation Environment Federation warned offsets can never be the solution to aviation’s carbon problem. “In order to meet the tough goals that states signed up to in the Paris Agreement, all countries will in any case need to reduce emissions close to zero in the coming decades, leaving little scope for any country or sector to sell their emissions reductions to airlines or air passengers by way of offset schemes,” it pointed out.  All that offsetting means is that carbon savings genuinely made in other sectors are cancelled out by more carbon emissions from transport (especially aviation). It just negates the carbon savings. That does nothing to cut the emissions from the transport itself, especially aviation.

Click here to view full story…

Heathrow 3rd runway unlawful, says Friends of the Earth, as DfT failed to consider the need for stringent CO2 targets

Friends of the Earth have accused the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, of acting unlawfully when he agreed to the 3rd Heathrow runway, in the Airports NPS. Their lawyers at the High Court legal challenge hearings the DfT failed to consider the full impacts of climate change and the need for more stringent targets to avoid catastrophic global warming. “Friends of the Earth is concerned that the expansion of Heathrow by adding a 3rd runway will jeopardise the UK’s ability to make the very deep reductions in greenhouse gases that are necessary to prevent global warming from causing catastrophic, irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”  The Court heard that the government knew when it approved the third runway that the Paris agreement, which UK ministers have signed, was likely to involve more stringent emissions targets than domestic law required under the 2008 UK Climate Change Act. David Wolfe QC, for FoE, said ministers were told by the Committee on Climate Change in January 2018 that as a result it was “essential that actions are taken now to enable these deeper reductions to be achieved”. But Grayling pressed on regardless, ignoring the advice.

Click here to view full story…

 

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