No New Runways

A 10-point action plan for sustainable aviation in the UK and Europe

May 2004

Contact Dr Spencer Fitz-Gibbon at the Green Party press office 020 7561 0282

The unrestrained growth of the aviation: is this progress?

Aviation is the most highly-polluting transport mode on earth and its costs - to the environment, health and the taxpayer - are huge.

The overall “external” (or hidden) economic costs of the EU’s aviation sector are currently estimated at £14.7 billion a year - of which the UK alone accounts for £3.767 billion, or 26%. These are costs not borne by the industry but by society as a whole, such as the costs of climate change and pollution-related ill-health.

The health costs of pollution from UK aviation are estimated at more than £1.3 billion a year.

The costs of UK aviation's contribution to climate change are estimated at well over £2 billion a year. And unless the government radically changes its policy on the matter, aviation's CO2 emissions will have increased by 588% between 1992 and 2050, and its NOx pollution by 411%. By 2050, aviation could be contributing up to 15% of the overall global warming effect produced by human activities - with staggering economic costs.

Research from the UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre suggests that we need to cut UK emissions by 85-90% by 2045[1], to avert the worst consequences of climate change. With the current trend in aviation, there is no hope of achieving that. Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee has warned that if aircraft emissions increase on the scale predicted by the Department of Trade and Industry, the UK government's 60% carbon emission reduction target will become "meaningless and unachievable."[2]

Despite this, the UK government has launched a massive airport expansion initiative and plans to build new runways at Stansted and Birmingham and increase traffic at Heathrow and many other airports.

To make matters worse, the UK aviation industry benefits from £9 billion a year in tax breaks.

The effect of aviation tax breaks and externalities is equivalent to each of the 58 million people in the UK donating an average £224 to the aviation industry every year. This does not include accident costs, direct and indirect subsidies to supporting industries including the oil industry and the aircraft manufacturing industry, or the costs of providing airports with ground transport infrastructure at public expense.

No New Runways 10-point plan: Real Progress

1. Green MEPs will push to end the EU-wide exemption on aviation fuel tax.

2. Green MEPs will push for a European-level charge on aviation, based on emissions.

3. Green MEPs are fighting for an EU-wide ban on night flights.

4. Aviation emissions undermine the European Union's ability to meet its Kyoto protocol targets on reduce CO2 emissions. Green MEPs will pressurise the European Commission to include CO2 from aviation in its Carbon Emission Trading Scheme.

5. Investment in less-polluting travel alternatives. Because 70% of European air trips are less than 1000 kilometres, and 45% are less than 500 kilomtres, there is huge scope for transfer to alternatives.

6. Greens support research into, and promotion of, further alternatives to business air travel, including video-conferencing, telepresence etc.

7. Greens are calling for the optimisation of air traffic control, which alone could reduce aviation's CO2 emissions by 6-12% over 20 years.

8. Greens want a public education programme on the negative economic and ecological consequences of air transportation.

9. Greens want changes in land-use planning law, requiring all applications for airport development to give full consideration to climate change, health, external costs and alternative job-creation.

10. Green MEPs will challenge the European Commission to take action against the UK Government for undermining Council Directive 96/62/EC on ambient air quality assessment and management and any other EU Directives on pollution and air quality, if they go ahead with their airport expansion plans.

For more information on the figures contained in this document, please see Aviation's Economic Downside, Dr Spencer FitzGibbon and Professor John Whitelegg, www.greenparty.org.uk/reports .