Cost Of "Carbon Abatement" For 3rd Heathrow Runway Doubles To 100 Million Pounds
The cost of abating the carbon impact of a proposed third runway at Heathrow has doubled since parliament approved the idea of expansion, a report presented to MPs suggests. A study by the New Economics Foundation suggests the carbon value or cleanup cost of the runway has increased from £50bn to £100bn, twice the figure presented to ministers and parliamentarians by the Department for Transport in the Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS) in 2018.
The “carbon value” of the expansion is the price of abatement required to offset the carbon emissions of the runway. This autumn, the government revised carbon values to bring them into line with new legally binding net zero obligations, passed in June 2019.
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The change in costs impacts all proposed airport expansion. Across eight airports planning projects all have had their climate cost dramatically underestimated, NEF says. The research suggested cumulatively the eight active airport expansion plans come with an emissions price tag of £73.6bn between 2025 and 2050. Only a fraction of this, £11.8bn, is likely to be reclaimed in taxes on the aviation industry. The remainder, £62bn, will be a cost to government and represent “a colossal subsidy to polluting industry, and significant cost – either economic, environmental, or both – to the rest of society”, the report said.
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Paul McGuinness, the chair of the No 3rd Runway Coalition, said: “As was perhaps inevitable, Heathrow expansion’s carbon costs have escalated exponentially, even before they’ve put more greenhouse gas emitting planes into our atmosphere. The ever-growing case for the government to cancel Heathrow expansion has become incontrovertible.” When MPs voted for the Airline National Policy Statement, which contained the expansion in principle in 2018, the net economic value of it was between £3bn and -£2.5bn, he said. Now the carbon abatement cost element of Heathrow expansion has increased exponentially, the total economic impact of the scheme can only come at a great cost to the UK economy, said McGuinness.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/22/cleanup-cost-of-heathrow-third-runway-doubles-to-100bn-mps-told
