Rachel Reeve’s announcement on 29th January 2025 that the government will back the expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Lutton is in direct contravention of our legally binding commitment to ‘Build back Greener’ and reach net zero by 2050. “No airport expansions should proceed” without a UK-wide plan to annually assess and control the sector’s climate impact said the government’s watchdog, the Climate Change Committee, in 2023. Aeroplanes are 8% of UK emissions and 2% of the world’s, but they also release gases that seed heat-trapping clouds in the upper atmosphere, which triples air travel’s greenhouse effect.
Richard Sulley, Senior Research Fellow, Sustainability Policy, University of Sheffield, summarises some of the evidence in his recent Conversation post. He argues that this expansion could undermine all the carbon gains made by the government’s mission to Make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower. Even worse, perhaps, an older report by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the link between increased air travel and economic growth is dubious, suggesting that we are increasingly prepared to compromise our future on the planet for ever diminishing growth returns.
There are also significant equity issues related to flying. Research from the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) explored the elite status and global inequities of flying and provided evidence that the richest people in the UK use more energy flying than the poorest do in every aspect of their lives. Analysis of data from 2019 highlights “significant inequalities” in energy use across the country. Those in the top 10% of incomes used nearly three times as much energy in a year as people in the bottom 30%. This was particularly true for transport. Car journeys and flights taken by the richest British people – especially “white, wealthy middle-aged men” – used more energy that year than 60% of the population got through in total.
One solution proposed by researchers at CREDS investigated how ‘socially just’ flyer levies on frequent fliers might be. They found that ‘frequent flights’ are even more unequally distributed than all flights and that taxes on air travel are distributionally neutral or progressive. The most progressive option is a ‘frequent air miles tax’ based on both the number of flights and emissions. At the same time, some social groups like recent migrants are relatively likely to be ‘frequent flyers’, even on lower incomes, and so may constitute a special group. Overall, however, the results show that taxing air travel is far less regressive than taxing home energy or motor fuels. Taxes on air travel, while often portrayed as unfair in public discourses, therefore raise fewer fairness concerns than other types of carbon taxes.
More recent research from the EDRC by Malcolm Morgan showed that 41% of UK aviation passengers travel on routes that can be done by rail in less than 24 hours, though these passengers account for only 14% of UK aviation emissions because long-haul flights contribute the majority of emissions. The paper, Can rail reduce British aviation emissions?, found that, on most routes, planes are cheaper and quicker than trains, so that significant policy intervention would be required redress this balance. For example, France has banned short-hall flights to help cut emissions. The paper also suggests more integrated transport systems, promoting sleeper trains and improving the use of package deals and prebooking on trains as other ways to make them more attractive.
The current Integrated National Transport Strategy, currently out for consultation, is one opportunity to do this but policies to reach net zero need to be integrated across government, and this announcement goes in the wrong direction. At COP29 the Prime Minister announced the UK’s 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in line with the Climate Change Committee’s advice, committing to an at least 81% reduction in Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2035 relative to 1990 levels, excluding emissions from international aviation and shipping. Properly including emissions from flying in our carbon budget needs to happen without delay.
The Positive Low Energy Futures Scenarios show that it is possible to reduce our emissions by 50% but this requires significant changes to how we use energy, including in mobility and flying. Current work at EDRC will help us understand the social mandate for such a low energy future, and what is required to get there, in terms of cultural, policy and social change. We cannot, however, expect individuals to make these changes without leadership from government.