Heathrow Airport, the carbon hellmouth, according to green demonology, is back in the news after reality has savaged Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s and the Government’s agenda for ‘growth’. Reeves is expected to green-light (no pun intended) the airport’s expansion plans, which began in the early 1990s, were formally set out by the Labour Government in 2003, and then bounced between Parliaments under different Governments and the courts ever since. So what to make of the return of the project, and how to square it with the Government’s commitment to Net Zero?
A 2020 judicial review brought by green organisations, Mayor Sadiq Khan and a number of borough councils, found that the plans for the expansion were incompatible with the Paris Agreement and therefore unlawful. Despite the fact that in 2018, MPs had voted in favour of the expansion, the 2020 ruling found that since “The UK ratified the Paris Agreement on November 17th 2016”, the expansion was unlawful because of the Secretary of State for Transport’s Airports National Policy Statement’s “failure to take account of the Paris Agreement”. Later that year, the ruling was overturned by the same Supreme Court, to howls of green rage promising vengeance and a pledge to use the Green Blob’s billions to continue obstructing the project in courts.
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In principal I support expansion but in current circumstances I don’t see the point
UK government taxes on long haul flights are huge. As a result a fast growing number of travellers fly first to a non-UK European hub (short haul, lower tax) snd join a long haul flight there.
Dublin, Paris, Madrid are getting busier. Maybe Frankfurt too. Their operating costs seem to be lower no doubt partly due to lower energy and regulatory costs.
The future of Heathrow seems to be as a feeder to continental hubs in competition with rail.
I agree. When I fly to the Far East, I usually go with Swissair via Zurich much better than useless arrogant, lazy BA from Heathrow.
“Nearly a quarter of a century has passed, epitomising to many Britain’s torpor and the state of planning laws and regulations that beset any kind of project, despite it having the support of Governments and a substantial majority of Parliament”
25 years to expand an airport…..there you go, the ‘modern’, ‘scientific’, ‘rational’ state in all its glory.
Yes Heathrow and every airport, highway, and transport route if necessary, should be expand. I am pro-carbon, pro-life unlike the Green Nazis.
However, if the expansion is to air freight in more Muslims, Indians and Africans, then no thanks. In fact if that is the main business model of Heathrow, close it.
Seconded.
When I first went to Circuit Carole north of Paris, Charles De Gaulle airport was in the distance. Returning about 15 years later the airport was only a couple of fields away such was the expansion.
Climate claptrap no doubt affects Heathrow’s runway thermometers, conveniently sited to pick up that extra 2 deg C from jet exhausts responsible for global boiling, whereas inherent climate variability and fluctuation affects the rest of us as it has since time immemorial. That’s all there is to it. So it goes.
Yawn, yawn. Getting seriously bored with all this climate claptrap. Just expand the bluddy airport and be done with it.
I think it’s unlikely in the next 5 years that this debate will be resolved. Beyond that my intelligence (not AI) can’t predict.
More or less my viewpoint. This will rumble on as the government’s flagship pro-growth headline until it is overtaken by something else in two or three years. It is a smokescreen and nothing more, guaranteed to exercise the MSM at great length and bore the pants off the rest of us while absolutely nothing happens.
Heathrow Three is a blame deflector and nothing more. Of necessity of course doing absolutely nothing barring enquiries, environmental studies and various court cases will also have the great benefit of soaking British taxpayers.
It’s a bloody con job.
I see it as a distraction not from any inactivity with regard to actual airport expansion, but from deregulation with regard to the actual building of hundreds of pylons.
At the end of the argument, money talks, and it might say that increasing the capacity of Heathrow can be good for the environment. It depends how it’s used; e.g it might reduce the need to queue up over the east end waiting to land. I seem to remember that they normally circulate over Canary Wharf when landing from the east, stepping down 1000’ at a time or thereabouts. It depends on the sequence of different types of aircraft in the queue as well.
I thought this article by Liam Halligan gave a good overview
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/26/reeves-heathrow-expansion-wont-help-britain-fly/
It doesn’t matter whether there is a third runway or even a fourth at LHR, there won’t be enough “Green”, sustainable, renewable chip-fat to fuel the planes.
To me it is like the Rwanda policy, devised to please a section of the electorate (or business community), but knowing that it will be defeated in the courts.
If the third runway ever gets approved it will need to be bullet-proofed against future govts. It is very plausible that the next govt will be a minority Labour one, with the Lib Dems demanding all sorts of lunacy to be part of a coalition.
I long to see hybrid electric planes, what a blow to greenies, who will lose their noise pollution argument, allowing 24-hour airport operation and generating more lovely CO2 from carrying the weight of the electric motors and batteries.
Actually I agree the turd runway is a daft idea, and I’d prefer the government to go for Boris island.
A gesture of vision and optimism.
And probably using Heathrow to build on you could kill lots of birds with one stone.
It is a vile place. Terminal 5 was voted the best airport in the world and for me it was the worst I ever experienced. You hear talk about The Holocaust being industrial level slaughter. In that place it was like being entirely processed. I would rather get a plane to Dublin and then another one than go back to Heathrow. Every time it is a bloody disaster. It has existed as a major hub for decades and yet still hasn’t sorted out a satisfactory UK public transport arrangement.
The Climate Change Act is almost incompatible with any attempt to improve the standard of living of people in the UK. And given continuing unregulated immigration increasing the population, I can’t see how average living standards can do anything but fall. All this talk of economic growth is a nonsense while the country s weighed down by this ridiculous legislation.
Regarding Heathrow, we will see more lawfare, more promises, more empty talk about prosperity and green futures. And then, sometime well before 2050, a UK Prime Minister will stand up and explain why the airport is being closed down completely.
Interesting piece whose focus I appreciate was on Net Zero but it omits mention of the other big issue in the Heathrow debate: noise. 28% of all people impacted by aircraft noise in Europe live under the Heathrow flight paths – depending on the metric used, between 700,000 and 1m people. Heathrow Airport recognises that it will not get a 3rd runway until it deals with noise.I’m not so sure the Government appreciates that. Labour has never been good on noise. All the key pieces of legislation to tackle noise in the round over the past 4 decades have been intoduced by Conservative governments. Labour has introduced none.
Sorry, just have to see the name Monbiot in an article and the red mist descends …
Let’s not forget the Thames Estuary Airport first proposed 80 years ago.
It always seemed such a good idea to me with my imagination seeing it become something as ambitious and pioneering as Changi Airport in Singapore. What a depressing place the UK has become.