When the Conservative government published its “jet zero” strategy in July 2022, designed to achieve net zero aviation emissions by 2050, it said that “passengers can look forward to guilt-free travel”. Coincidentally, the strategy was announced on the UK’s hottest day on record – leaving some to question the desire to essentially maintain the status quo. Grant Shapps, the then business secretary, subsequently doubled down on the phrase, saying that “guilt-free flying” was “within our reach”, a phrase that seemed to minimise the herculean progress necessary to make “jet zero” a reality.
Labour has taken up the jet zero mantle, but so far green groups have been left unimpressed by its actions, particularly regarding airport expansion. Speaking at the Times Earth Summit last week, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, threw his support behind the government’s plan to invest £1.1 billion in Stansted airport. “There’s a difference between bigger and better,” he said. “What the announcement for Stansted is [about] is improving the experience customers are getting. It used to be a great airport, it’s now a bit tired in relation to the infrastructure, so the investment will lead to improved travel links to the airport, improving the terminal.”
What the mayor failed to mention is that Stansted will also be made significantly bigger. Of the £1.1 billion earmarked for investment, £600 million will go towards an extension of the main terminal, and Stansted expects to welcome 43 million passengers a year once the project is complete in 2027-28 – an increase of more than 10 million a year. It would make Stansted the UK’s second busiest airport.
The plans have been heavily criticised by green groups and campaigners, with the columnist George Monbiot calling it “yet another assault on human and planetary wellbeing”. Paul Morozzo, a Greenpeace UK climate campaigner, said that “allowing high-carbon industries to expand completely contradicts the climate case for the ‘tidal wave of clean investment’ this government is trying to base our economic recovery around”.
However, Khan defended the plans as consistent with the government’s climate policy: “The government has said that expansion only happens in accordance with the Climate Change Committee recommendations. What this government’s not going to do is ignore the experts.”
However, the Climate Change Committee said in June last year that “no airport expansions should proceed until a UK-wide capacity management framework is in place”. No such framework has been established since Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister. Khan also referenced advances in aviation technology in his support for the plans: “You can have more passengers coming to the airport with fewer aircraft, with the investment in bigger planes and technology, with the advancements in sustainable aviation fuel.”
Besides the fact that bigger planes require more jet fuel, using advances in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to justify airport expansion is a stretch. As I reported last week, SAF is unproven at scale, with most start-ups only producing tiny amounts. OXCCU, one the UK’s foremost pioneers of SAF technology, plans to scale up its operations to produce 200 litres of fuel a day by 2026. For context, Heathrow uses 20 million litres of fuel per day.
SAF is also an industry under fire. Virgin Atlantic has been reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority for being “misleading” about the climate impact of a headline-making transatlantic flight last November, which it claimed to have completed using “100 per cent sustainable aviation fuel”. The complainants contended that the phrase implied that the fuel had no adverse environmental effects. However, SAF emits the same volume of emissions as fossil fuels at the tailpipe, relying on savings in lifecycle emissions during their production to make their sustainability claims.
While doubts remain over the net environmental impact of SAF, experts argue that more punitive regulatory measures are needed if any benefits are to be reaped. A report from the American organisation Climate Catalyst calls for a kerosene tax on aviation fuel, which is currently exempt from fuel duties, to “help to level the playing field between the cost of conventional jet fuel and SAFs”. This was echoed by the Green Alliance think tank, which said that such a tax would “give the sector breathing room to develop new technologies at scale and provide a crucial revenue stream at a time of fiscal constraint”.
Another report released this week by the New Economics Foundation calls for a second tax to be implemented in Europe on top of a fuel duty on kerosene – a frequent flyer levy. Due to the financial burden that a fuel duty could place on low-income consumers and infrequent flyers, it argues that a frequent flyer levy would help to mitigate this while supporting the green transition. Modelling suggests that it would also deliver a 26 per cent reduction in passenger numbers by 2028, translating to a 21 per cent reduction in carbon emissions.
When Rishi Sunak was in office, a report by OpenDemocracy alleged that he cut aviation tax on flights within the UK and rejected a frequent flyer levy after lobbying from the aviation industry (a government spokesman said at the time that ministers were “absolutely committed” to delivering net-zero targets). Will Sir Keir Starmer tread a similar path, or take the jet zero strategy he inherited in a new direction?
