Chancellor Rachel Reeves presented a vision on Wednesday to “make Britain the best networked place for shops” because she signaled the support for a massive expansion of the airport in all of London.
Reeves said the government wanted a third runway in Heathrow – although it will take more than a decade, and signaled the support for immediate extensions on the Gatwick and Luton airports. Projects in Stansted and City have already been approved.
In the case of delivery, the extended airports could handle 309 million passengers annually – an increase in the 167 million travelers who used the airports in 2023 the last year, for which there are complete data – according to an analysis of the financial times.
The extent of the plans shows how airports and their group are largely international investor owners that the flight will continue to grow in the coming decades that are not burdened with concerns regarding carbon emissions.
“The Chancellor is right to stand behind airports,” said Karen Dee, managing director of the Trade Association Airportsuk. “The expansion of capacity will support growth. . . And will not go at the expense of our sustainability goals. “
Industry experts, however, said that the growth of this size would face serious challenges, including the need to re -draw the flight paths in heaven over London and southeast of England in order to take up all additional aircraft, which is likely to have an impact on new communities.
The enthusiasm of the Chancellor also believed that there were hardly any conceived tensions within the cabinet, which has been created for decades about the controversial infrastructure project in Great Britain.
If it is successful, this would probably also become more expensive, especially from Heathrow, since the airport increases the landing fees to the airlines in order to regain the costs for the construction of the runway.
Nevertheless, Becrom Basu said a partner at LEK Consulting who advised Heathrow that the new capacity would be used.
“The London market has difficulty satisfying demand for a while. . . I think investors can feel comfortable, there will be a business case for this level of demand, ”he said.
The most serious challenge is probably the effects of the expansion of the airport on the CO2 emissions of the UK.
“I find it a bit difficult to see in Heathrow. However, due to the pandemic, the airport never presented a planning application.
As a chancellor who was ready to make “courageous decisions in national interest” and asked Heathrow’s management to present plans for the construction of a third runway.
While former governments had supported the politically controversial project lukewarm, the managing director of Heathrow, Thomas Woldbye, said that he would believe that the airport would now “sit around the table” together with the government to deliver the third runway .
“We can trust the government, they can be with us for many years,” he said.
Woldbye said an energy plant.
But only a few doubt the extent of the political challenges that are still facing the project.
At the beginning of this month, the Minister of Energy Ed Miliband said that he would not withdraw if the third runway would go in an apparently capitulation of the project’s largest cabinet opponent.
However, according to a government familiar with the situation, Miliband is said to be “angry” behind the scenes. He was not among the cabinet ministers in the speech.
Other cabinet ministers were also surprised by a sudden decision by Reeves a few weeks ago. “There was really a big series about it, between the Ministry of Finance and almost everyone,” said one person near the discussions.
Some Whitehall officials even suggested that Reeves had tried to publicly support Prime Minister Sir Keir Starrer – who had previously voted against the measure. So far, he has avoided doing this with the prime minister’s questions of the Prime Minister in the past week.
Despite Reeves’ warm words, a skeptic in the government said that Heathrow’s developmental sequence order still had to hand over strict criteria for the climate, air pollution and noise.
“You still have to reach the same standards that you made 24 hours before this announcement,” you said. “There is a lot of street to run on it.”
In the meantime, the long -time opponent of London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that he was “just not convinced that they could have hundreds of thousands of additional flights in Heathrow every year without an extremely harmful influence on our environment”.
Ruth Cadbury, Labor MP from Brentford & Isleworth – and Chairman of the Select Committee Transport – said that the committee will now examine “how clearly the connections between airport expansion and growth”.
Cadbury said that she was skeptical that the project could ever meet the four tests for climate change, regional economic advantages, noise and air pollution.
“The test is whether the project for Great Britain (company) offers overall for nations and regions, and that? Not really, ”she said.
In contrast, Reeves insisted that the third runway would benefit the whole country.
Reeves insisted that the government was compatible with the “legal, environmental and climate commitments” of the government, since they pointed out technological progress that could pave the way for “clean and greener aviation”.
The aviation industry agrees that it can grow during decarbonization. The Roadmap for Net Zero 2050 published in 2022 is required that the number of passengers can still grow during waste.
In addition, it is largely dependent on “sustainable aviation forces” or safs that consist of a variety of sources of plants and used food oil to achieve household waste. The industry estimates that it can spend about 70 percent less carbon dioxide than conventional aviation fuel through their life cycle.
However, it is far more expensive than Jet fuel and currently only available in tiny quantities. The bosses of the airline said that the industry would need considerably more state support to scale the production of SAFs in order to achieve NET zero.
Colin Walker, transport manager at the research group of Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said the government’s hope that sustainable aviation fuel will compensate for the additional emissions from Heathrow’s expansion “unrealistic”.
“A third runway will increase emissions far beyond the capacity of these fuels to compensate for them,” he said.
In the meantime, Heathrow had unsuccessfully pushed for growth for decades.
“Heathrow would have to run very hard and the government’s decisions would be questioned on the way,” said Alistair Watson, partner and head of the planning of Taylor Wessing.
“The only ones who will win from it are lawyers.”
