Net zero may doom Heathrow's £49bn expansion plans

Telegraph

7 days ago

Political debate – and argument – over how and whether to expand airport capacity at London's Heathrow has encompassed virtually my entire working career.
Acres of rainforest have been consumed, accommodating the sheer volume of newspaper column inches that have been devoted to this seemingly never-ending saga. And all to no avail. Still, we seem no closer to a resolution.
The economic case for a third runway has long been strong, but the political and financial obstacles have always been, and continue to be, formidable. I'd be amazed if it happens in my lifetime.
Hope nevertheless springs eternal, and Heathrow is once again asking for the green light to take its £49bn plans for expansion forward to the planning application stage.
There is also a rival proposal for a shorter and less expensive third runway from the hotel tycoon Surinder Arora, who is the largest owner of land in the Heathrow area. He claims to be deadly serious, even if he is suspected by some of a ruse to persuade Heathrow to buy him out.
For the record, any such motive is denied, and with the backing of Bechtel, which has nearly 200 successfully completed airports to its name, he can scarcely be accused of frivolous intent.
It is not at all clear that the full 2.2-mile runway planned by Heathrow itself is necessary, even for long-haul flights. Heathrow's record on delivering infrastructure on time and to budget is also abysmal. If Mr Arora can deliver some proper competition at a fraction of the price, it would be all for the good.
Labour governments have long been more open to the idea of expansion at Heathrow than their Tory counterparts, if only because they have less to lose in constituencies likely to be adversely affected by it.
Boris Johnson was so opposed that he pledged to lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop construction.
While foreign secretary, he arranged to be conveniently out of the country on a trip to Afghanistan when a key vote sponsored by his own Government took place to give the go-ahead to a third runway. As I say, Heathrow expansion has long generated far more in the way of good copy than meaningful progress.
In any case, a third runway fits neatly into Labour's ambitions to be the party of 'the builders, not the blockers'. If not a spade is turned over the next four years, that boast too – like much else in Labour's policy agenda – would be exposed as so much hot air.
If Labour is as good as its word, then the bulldozers could be on site within a year or two, Heathrow claims. Its plans are already 'shovel-ready'. Is it finally 'chocks away', then?
For true believers in Britain's continued ability to build big infrastructure, it would be nice to think so.
But this is a project cursed by disappointment, and I'll believe it when I see it. Unfortunately for the airport's backers, there is a further consideration beyond the say-so of ministers that threatens to floor all such grand designs: are they compatible with the Government's separate net zero commitments?
This matter appeared to be settled once and for all by a Supreme Court judgment nearly five years ago that dismissed an application by Friends of the Earth and others, including Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, to have the proposal declared unlawful on environmental grounds.
The dismissal occurred slap bang in the middle of the pandemic – when many seriously questioned whether Heathrow had a future at all, let alone whether there would be sufficient demand for a third runway – so nobody took much notice of it at the time. It appeared almost entirely irrelevant.
But passenger numbers have recovered sharply since then, and the airport is once more full to bursting.
What gives the environmental issue new legs is that though there may be space within net zero commitments for one more runway in London and the South East, it is questionable whether they would tolerate more than one.
The Government has nonetheless announced what is in essence a free-for-all. Anyone who wants to build a new runway is now free to submit their planning application, apparently confident in the view that it will be approved.
Rival proposals include a second runway at Gatwick. A number of other UK airports also hope to significantly increase capacity using existing facilities.
This 'let them all have planning permission' approach would be all very well but for one rather important fact: the Government's almost religiously held commitment to net zero would struggle to accommodate the collective totality of all this extra capacity, even if the demand for it exists.
John Gummer, a former chairman of the Government's Climate Change Committee (CCC), has already said as much. The Airports Commission, which recommended giving the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow, also said that accommodating a second additional runway within the CCC's plans for meeting net zero would be extremely challenging.
Great strides are admittedly being made in aircraft efficiency, and there is much promise in bio-aviation fuel as a way of reducing the industry's carbon footprint.
Even so, Heathrow will find it hard to impossible to secure the finance for its objectives as long as the possibility exists of significant capacity expansion elsewhere.
The same would apply to Gatwick, which would similarly struggle to secure the finance for a second runway as long as Heathrow persists with its ambitions.
A kind of stalemate is threatened, where the possibility of too much capacity might lead to no additional capacity at all.
No one will want to invest in Heathrow or Gatwick as long as they think use of the new runways might be restricted on environmental grounds.
The dilemma highlights a wider truth about Labour's ambitions for economic growth. What level of economic development is compatible with the Government's separate pursuit of net zero by 2050? Are the two not in direct conflict with one another?
That question has already been answered with regard to further development of North Sea oil and gas. It's being stopped on environmental grounds, never mind the cost to GDP, jobs and tax revenues.
Of course, the quid pro quo is meant to be a veritable boom in the construction of a spanking new renewables infrastructure. Sadly, this has yet to show up in the GDP data, perhaps because so much of the enabling kit is being imported from China and Europe, rather than supporting jobs and growth here in the UK.
Outsourcing our energy-intensive manufacturing to the likes of China works wonders in getting the UK's emissions down, but it doesn't help the wider global picture on emissions one bit.
We can only hope that the same wonky thinking doesn't infect the UK's approach to airport expansion, but that's the way it's going.