Aviation lobbyist admits Heathrow could be a white elephant

We always thought that the government's economic case for the third runway at Heathrow was flawed. Particularly so given their plan to only allow use of half of the runway's capacity if environmental targets weren't met.

And it turns out we're not alone in our belief. Yesterday this line of argument received some unlikely support from Lord Clive Soley, the campaign director of aviation lobbyists Future Heathrow.

He said on the Today programme:

"... if the airport doesn't meet the pollution restrictions including noise, then they have to reduce the use of the runway until they come within that level... my conviction is that they will actually reach it anyway because of all the technical and other developments that are taking place but really even if they didn't, think the worst possible case, then in that case the runway cannot be used to it's full extent - in those circumstances you might say that it wouldn't make economic sense, but I'm convinced that they will meet it..."

So... He's agreeing that the economic case for the third runway doesn't stack up if the runway doesn't run at full capacity. This is significant. (Even though we reckon the economic case barely stacks up even with full-capacity operation.)

Lord Soley has faith in what he calls, intriguingly, ‘technological developments and indeed, other developments', which will cut emissions from planes, squaring the circle of how to have more flights at Heathrow with reduced overall emissions.

The government predict that these hypothetical emissions reductions will emerge over the next ten years, and allow an expanded Heathrow to pass their emissions tests.

'Technological and other developments'.We can only speculate what Lord Soley means when he talks about ‘other developments' - what development would mean more flights but less emissions? Possibly Future Heathrow have a plan to breed some sort of Avatar-style flying bird lizard as an alternative to short-haul flights, we'll let you know if we see any.

Anyway, at least the technological developments argument is well-trodden. The idea is that having more flights doesn't increase emissions because the planes are more efficient - so each flight produces less carbon.

The aviation industry, who generously pay for Lord Soley's interventions on the Today programme, reckon they can reduce emissions from planes by 2% a year. The government reckon that 1.5% per year is more reasonable.

The Committee on Climate Change, the independent experts who were specifically tasked to look into this issue by the government, reported back after about a year of work saying they thought that 0.8% per year was a likely bet.

And herein lies the problem. The government say that planes are going to get more efficient about twice as fast as the CCC's assessment. And the industry (quelle surprise) is predicting even faster than that. (Although the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said they were being ‘clearly aspirational', which is kind of a polite way of saying it's never going to happen.)

The issue for Lord Soley is that the experts don't seem to agree with him that an era of massively increased capacity at Heathrow with lower emissions is just around the corner. It's unlikely a third runway at Heathrow would pass the environmental tests the government claims it's going to enforce.

That means that a third runway at Heathrow would, if you believe the government would enforce these tests, never be run at full capacity.

And according to Lord Soley, (and us) that means that the economics of Heathrow will never make sense.

Update: Tim at FullFact points out that Lord Soley's claims about the majority of people in west London supporting a third runway are a bit suspect.