No Expansion of Heathrow Airport in the Name of Climate Action

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By Stéphane Amant – Senior Manager

The story isn't quite over yet. But In a few months, we will know whether the English Court of Appeal’s ruling on the illegality of the plan to build a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport, due to a failure to take into account the United Kingdom's climate commitments, whether or not it is a milestone. The press gave the event extensive coverage [1] [2]. And rightly so, for at least two reasons:

• Heathrow is the 7th-busiest airport in the world and the busiest in Europe in terms of traffic [3]. It is, therefore, a giant in the aviation industry;
• to the best of our knowledge This is the first time (at least on this scale) that a court ruling has cited the Paris Agreement to deem a transportation infrastructure project illegal intended to increase traffic.

For the most committed advocates in the fight against climate change, however, it is too early to claim victory, as Heathrow’s operator has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, and the outcome of the battle therefore remains uncertain. This is all the more true given that The Court of Appeals' decision was based on procedural grounds rather than on the merits. In fact, the ruling was issued on the grounds that “ The Paris Agreement should have been taken into account by the Secretary of State"regarding transportation […] and an explanation should have been provided on how it was taken into account, which was not the case." So that doesn't mean that he is "necessarily incompatible" in line with the UK's commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the government and the airport must provide evidence of this. This is a real challenge, given that the expansion project was intended to allow for a 50% increase in aircraft movements at the facility over the next 10 years (which translates to even more traffic) [4]. It’s hard to imagine reducing its environmental impact while increasing traffic to this extent, despite all the progress in energy efficiency demonstrated by the aviation sector… In this case, The British government has decided to throw in the towel by choosing not to file an appeal. It must be said that the context of international climate negotiations strongly supports this view: the upcoming COP26 will be hosted … in Glasgow … by the United Kingdom, in November of this year. Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, certainly didn’t have much trouble making the call.

It is also worth noting that the United Kingdom has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, which effectively means reducing its GHG emissions by at least 80% compared to 1990 levels [5]. However, it remains unclear whether international flights to and from the United Kingdom are included in this target [6], although the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the body that advises the government on climate-related issues, made this recommendation in a report published in September 2019 [7]. Nevertheless, The decision of February 27 is significant because it demonstrates the binding nature of the Paris Agreement, and makes it operational in the sense that national judges will be able to invoke it when ruling on infrastructure projects that conflict with GHG emission reduction targets. The developers of the (hypothetical) future Terminal 4 at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, near Paris, can’t be feeling very confident right now.Finally, one possible way to interpret this court ruling is through the lens of the growth in air traffic (approximately +5% per year worldwide for at least the past 20 years), which more than offsets all the technological and operational improvements implemented by the various players in the aviation ecosystem.

While the challenge facing the aviation industry in the fight against climate change certainly lies in technological innovation, we believe it also lies in innovation in the management and control of its growth. This is a new and inevitably unsettling topic, because humanity has always sought to develop and push the boundaries. Now, however, people on Earth must accept that limits exist and consider the future of economic activities within the framework of those limits. Marked by a century of remarkable innovations in every respect (technology, safety, organization, etc.), The aviation sector must now address the issue of “limit management” in order to stay on a path compatible with limiting global warming to less than 2°C.. This will require addressing many difficult questions, including: Should we rely solely on economic mechanisms to regulate growth? Or, on the contrary, should we rely primarily on regulatory instruments? Given that there are limits, how should we allocate the right to fly among citizens—in a way that ensures intergenerational equity, equity among regions of the world, and equity based on the reasons for travel, etc.? Should we introduce the concept of the societal utility of air travel to determine this distribution? How can this be done democratically to avoid slipping into a form of enlightened totalitarianism? In short, this is a new and exciting field to explore, one that could set a precedent for entire sectors of the economy. The aviation sector certainly has the capacity to address this issue—let’s not doubt that. But will it have the will to do so?

 [1] Le Monde [2] BBC News [3] Weekly Roundup [4] Air & Cosmos [5] UK Government [6] Aviation Environment Federation [7] Greenaironline