UK climate committee says Heathrow expansion incompatible with Net Zero

Industry would need to fund cleaner fuels and carbon-removal technology

The UK’s Climate Change Committee has told the government that Heathrow Airport’s planned third runway cannot proceed without changes to current climate policy, with the committee’s chair declaring that the £33 billion expansion is not currently compatible with the country’s Net Zero target.

In its report, submitted as part of the government’s ongoing consultation on the runway, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) said the project could still go ahead — but only if ministers pass legislation requiring the aviation industry to fund cleaner fuels and to deploy machines that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Without those conditions, the committee said, the expanded airport would by 2050 produce more carbon dioxide than any other single sector of the UK economy.

“Our advice today is clear — Heathrow expansion is not currently compatible with the UK’s Net Zero target,” CCC chair Nigel Topping said. “Government needs to ensure that the aviation industry takes responsibility for the emissions it creates and bears the costs of decarbonisation. Those conditions do not exist today.”

The committee’s cost estimates project that fully allocating decarbonisation to the industry would be passed on to passengers. A return trip to Alicante would cost about £150 more by 2050, and a return to New York about £400 more in today’s prices, the report said. Topping argued that, phased over 25 years, the increase would amount to “less than a cup of coffee each way” per year for the Alicante route.

To keep the expanded airport within the UK’s carbon budgets, the committee said carbon-removal technology would need to offset more than a third of projected emissions by 2050. But it noted that almost none of that technology currently exists at scale, and that credible plans cover just 1% of the engineered removals needed by the late 2030s.

The CCC report cannot itself block a new runway, but it calls on ministers to pass legislation transferring responsibility for long-term aviation decarbonisation to the sector before any expansion proceeds. The committee argued that making the industry — rather than the government — bear the cost of clean-up was the fairest way to cut carbon.

Heathrow said expansion and climate goals were “not a choice” and that the airport would deliver both. A Department for Transport spokesperson said any expansion would need to align with national climate targets but added that the project “could deliver around £40bn to the economy and support up to 60,000 local jobs.”

Chancellor John Healey told Parliament last week that ministers had “given the go-ahead” to the project. “After years of delay, years of indecision, years of often vexatious challenge, we have given the go-ahead to this project quite simply because the economic case stacks up and will help bring growth,” Healey said in response to opposition questions.

The airline industry rejected the committee’s approach. Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said carriers backed the government’s 2050 Net Zero target but added that the transition “has to be affordable.” He warned the CCC plan would put holidays “out of reach for millions” and turn the clock back to “a time when flying was the preserve of the rich.” Alderslade said the answer was airspace reform and scaling up sustainable aviation fuels made from waste oil and plant matter, with carbon-removal deployment requiring government support because the aviation sector “cannot and should not shoulder the burden of scaling up this industry alone.”

Some researchers said the committee’s advice does not go far enough. Dr Lois Pennington of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research told the BBC that because cleaner fuels and carbon-removal technology are unlikely to arrive at the scale needed, the only reliable way to stay within the UK’s carbon limits was to halt or reduce the expansion of flying. “We need to make sure that we are not flying more than we are now,” she said.

The government has an ongoing consultation testing any expansion against four criteria — economy, climate, air quality and noise — but does not itself approve a runway. A formal vote in the House of Commons on the planning framework is expected later this year.

The £33bn project would raise Heathrow’s capacity to 150 million passengers a year, up from 85 million. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who argued before entering Downing Street that a third runway would divert investment from the north and “trap it in London and the South East,” remains opposed to the plan. Mayor of London Lord Sadiq Khan has raised concerns about the project’s climate and noise impact. Around 750 homes would face demolition to make way for the new runway, amid long-standing opposition from councils and residents under the flight path.