For 20 years, politicians, industry leaders and campaigners have fought in courts, parliament and public meetings over the idea of building a new runway for Heathrow. For some, a third runway would not only boost passenger numbers at the airport but would be a symbol of the country’s determination to seek economic regeneration. For others, it would demonstrate, in vivid terms, our complete failure to understand the grim, global threat posed by further increasing carbon emissions.
Last week, Rachel Reeves chose to enter the fray. Remarkably, for a supposed green chancellor, she elected to back the project and seek the expansion of Heathrow to raise its annual passenger capacity by 50% to about 140 million. “A third runway at Heathrow would unlock further growth, boost investment, increase exports and make the UK more open and more connected,” she claimed. It was a bold move. It is unlikely history will view it as a sensible or justifiable one, however. On almost every level – political, local or environmental – her decision looks naive, if not foolish.
Consider the local impact of constructing a third runway. As John McDonnell MP has pointed out, a third runway would mean that 4,000 properties in his Hayes and Harlington constituency – in which Heathrow sits – would be demolished or rendered unlivable because of noise or air pollution. About 10,000 men, women and children would be forced out of their homes as a result. In addition, schools, churches and community centres would be lost if the third Heathrow runway goes ahead. For a nation in the midst of a housing crisis, proceeding with a venture with such a stark outcome looks odd.
Local people can be expected to protest with considerable vigour, and are likely to be supported by much of the rest of London. Apart from the demolition of thousands of homes around Heathrow, the new runway will require the diverting of a river and the rerouting of the M25 under a huge new tunnel. The upheaval will be significant and lasting.
As critics have pointed out, stimulating growth in the south-east could be done in ways that would cause much less disruption, such as the proposed extensions of the Docklands Light Railway and the Bakerloo tube line, and the building of the Crossrail 2 line. All would give major boosts to local industry and support a mode of transport that has low environmental impacts.
For her part, Reeves has claimed that a third runway would reduce the number of planes that circle over Heathrow – while burning fuel and emitting carbon dioxide – as they wait for a landing slot. In addition, the introduction of sustainable aviation fuel in coming years will cut the industry’s carbon footprint in the long term, she argued. Both claims are dubious.
Sustainable aviation fuels – made from renewable sources such as crops and agricultural waste – currently power only a tiny fraction of flights across the planet, and scaling up production presents real challenges for manufacturers. A recent Royal Society report calculated that to grow enough crops to make all our aviation fuel sustainable would require around half of UK agricultural land to be turned to this single purpose.
Nor is there evidence to support the claim that increasing Heathrow’s capacity will make it easier to provide landing slots. The new runway is specifically being built to boost numbers of flights in and out of the airport, and this increase will soon put pressure on the provision of landing slots, so planes are likely to continue stacking over southern England.
Many of the analyses on which Reeves has based these claims have not been published and campaigners have rightly expressed their suspicions about the chancellor’s assertions of the third runway’s benefits. They point out that in 2023 UK aviation emitted the equivalent of 32.9m tonnes of carbon dioxide – roughly 8% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions for that year. It is hard to see how building a third runway at Heathrow, which will increase flights there from their current maximum of 480,000 to 720,000 a year, will help to reduce this emissions figure. Reeves’ arguments look flimsy and unrealistic, to say the least.
In waiting too long to announce moves to boost the economy after imposing harsh fiscal measures last year, it would appear that Reeves has panicked and over-compensated in making an ill-advised move to stimulate growth. In simple terms, the decision to back the plan to build a third runway at Heathrow has left the new government’s green credentials in tatters.
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Britain is committed to achieving net zero by 2050, at which point the UK will have had to have reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 100% from 1990 levels. If such a goal is to be achieved, and the nation is to play its part in saving the world from disastrous storms, droughts, loss of coral reef and catastrophic sea level rises, many changes in our behaviour will have to be endured, and restrictions on air travel may well be one of these.
It would be an inexcusable waste of money to build an edifice dedicated to supporting an industry that is linked to a climate outcome that threatens to lead to global instability. From these perspectives, a third Heathrow looks an egregious political error.
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