Third Heathrow runway conditional on green funding

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has released a report stating that the proposed £33bn expansion of Heathrow Airport, featuring a third runway, can proceed only on the condition that the aviation industry funds cleaner fuels and pays for machines designed to suck carbon dioxide directly out of the air.

Implementing this requirement is projected to increase ticket prices for travelers. According to the committee, a return trip to Alicante, Spain, could cost around £150 more, while a return flight to New York could rise by up to £400 in today's prices by 2050. This approach shifts the financial burden of decarbonisation directly onto the industry rather than relying on government funding.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

Once completed, the expanded airport would increase passenger capacity from 85 million to 150 million people annually. However, it would also generate more carbon dioxide emissions than any other single sector of the UK economy by 2050. Consequently, the committee emphasizes that engineered carbon-removal machines must be deployed to eliminate more than one-third of these emissions.

Despite these proposals, airline industry representatives have rejected the approach, arguing that scaling up carbon removal is highly challenging and that the sector cannot shoulder the burden alone without government support. Meanwhile, Dr. Lois Pennington from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research warned that because clean fuels and carbon removal are unlikely to scale up sufficiently, halting or reducing flight expansion remains the only reliable method to stay within UK carbon limits.