Aviation out of hibernation

To me it feels like the issue of aviation and the UK’s airports is slowly emerging from hibernation. This cauldron of debate, misinformation and lobbying is beginning to feel hot to the touch again.

However, perhaps that’s just because I was personally thrown right into the thick of this debate at the start of the week. I endured and enjoyed what was  one of my toughest experiences on behalf of the RSPB to date. At the Transport Select Committee’s inquiry into aviation I represented the RSPB and subjected myself to 30 minutes of questioning by a roundtable of MPs. I felt very grateful to be flanked by very able colleagues from WWF and a fellow RSPB-er.

We must start with the environmental limits

Sitting in front of the MPs and attempting to answer their questions, alongside colleagues from WWF, was a demanding task. However, we all did our best to outline the key principles we believe should shape the UK’s aviation strategy:

-          we need to start with the environmental limits on aviation; our legally binding climate change limits must be at the heart of aviation policy

-          there is substantial spare capacity in the aviation system:  if we use it better we can  reduce, probably eliminate, the need for any new runways or airports

For the MPs the potential loss of competition and economic benefit looms large. However, as we clearly outlined, these risks are overstated by the aviation industry - and the starting point has to be the environmental limits we absolutely can’t afford to breach.

Putting aside for one minute the legally binding nature of our climate targets and the local, site-specific ecological impacts of any particular airport expansion, the planet can’t afford to cope with runaway emissions from this rapidly growing sector.

(Thousands of wading birds rely upon the Thames Estuary, one of the sites where many have proposed we could build a new airport; photo credit Matt Adam Williams)

Demand is down

Figures released by the Department for Transport this week show that projected demand from aviation has fallen again. These demand figures have been on a downward trend for the past ten years. Predicting 315 million passengers per annum, the Department has revised its figures downwards by 90 million compared to four years ago.

Dramatically falling predictions of future demand adds more weight to questions about the wisdom of building new runways or airports.

The EU ETS is not currently a viable solution

A new paper this week from the University of East Anglia claims that because emissions from aviation are capped overall by the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme - we don’t need to worry about how much we fly – the absolute cap will ensure emissions don’t grow too much.

This is wrong for four reasons:

1. The ETS is in poor health right now. Too many permits to emit carbon dioxide mean that there is no realistic or meaningful cap. What’s more, this results in the cost of permits being very low – the price reached its lowest ever level in the past week at 2.81.
2. The ETS doesn’t account for the effect of emissions of gases other than carbon dioxide. These aren’t currently accounted for, as the science around them is still developing, but some estimate that they could double the emissions impact of aviation.
3. Not every sector can sustain unlimited expansion – if aviation wants to expand and buy permits to emit more this means other industries surrendering their permits and making more effort to reduce their emissions. However, we can’t endlessly keep finding spare emissions – every sector will have to do its part to limit its growth in emissions, and in the case of aviation this will mean we’ll have to fly less, whether it’s through choice or due to the increasing cost of flying.
4. The inclusion of aviation emissions in the ETS is currently on hold anyway, while the International Civil Aviation Organisation tries to come up with a global solution to this problem.

It has been an interesting week and it’s clear that an objective perspective and the value of the environment need to play a far greater role in this debate.