This article specifically considers the implications of the judgement to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) assessments for aviation projects, and does not consider any wider implications to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
The decision in R (on the application of Finch on behalf of Weald Action Group) (Appellant) v Surrey County Council and others (Respondent) (“Finch”) was that the Council were wrong to allow indirect downstream ‘Scope 3’ emissions of combustion of hydrocarbons extracted from the proposed oil and gas extraction project to be scoped out of the EIA for the project.
The ruling examined a quite specific case study involving the extraction of fossil fuels. Although it is not known when and where such emissions will occur, it is simple to estimate the indirect Scope 3 GHG emissions that would arise from their use and therefore carry out an assessment. It is noteworthy that the ruling was a majority decision of 3 to 2. The split opinion of the judges is indicative of the arguments in the case being diverse, complex and far from clear cut.
Within the GHG Protocol, Scope 3 emissions are very broad; within corporate reporting they are split into 15 separate categories of which downstream use of sold products (i.e. combustion of fuel in the Finch case) is only one of them. The Finch judgement may therefore transcend the specific case study in the judgement, but extend to the scoping of all EIA project GHG assessments, and ignite discussion on the boundaries of the Scope 3 emissions assessment.
So how will this affect airport projects in the UK? Well, probably not much. The aviation industry is well advanced in the monitoring and assessment of its GHG emissions. Most major UK airports have well-developed GHG emissions inventories which cover a range of Scope 3 emissions including flights, passenger travel to and from the airport and goods and services procured by the airport. In the context of an airport operator, emissions from aircraft (operated by airlines) represent a downstream emission as they result from the use of the airport’s services, rather than being emissions directly owned and controlled by the airport operator itself. Indeed, it may be that the effect of these emissions have already been assessed as part of a planning or regulatory assessment at the point of extraction or processing. Whilst this raises an interesting point of debate, it is unlikely to justify ignoring them in assessments at the point of use.
Aviation projects such as airport expansion projects (e.g. Stansted, Bristol, Gatwick, London City and Leeds Bradford in recent years) tend to be supported by a detailed GHG assessment covering all of the airport’s direct emissions and a wide range of indirect Scope 3 emissions (both downstream and upstream). In this regard, these projects don’t conflict with the Finch judgement; however as with any GHG footprint or assessment, boundaries are set to define what’s in and what’s out. Here we discuss some common exclusions and the impact of the Finch judgement on these issues:
Non-CO2 Effects
These are a complex suite of atmospheric interactions that can increase the global warming effect of flights, including NOx, SOx, water vapour and fine particle emissions at altitude. Non-CO2 effects are typically scoped out of EIA for airport projects. Whilst there can be some debate in light of Finch, there is broad agreement that quantifying these effects has significant uncertainty, and these effects are intrinsically linked to the operation of aircraft, which are included in the EIA through the quantification and assessment of GHG emissions from fuel combustion during flights. It therefore follows that Finch does not change this approach in EIA.
International Arrivals
It is accepted that two airports are required to connect a commercial flight. International convention on GHG accounting in the aviation sector attributes emissions from an airport, country or region to its departing flights only. This is the way international aviation emissions are accounted for in the UK’s net zero commitments and national carbon budgets (i.e. only flights departing the UK are counted, as emissions from flights arriving in the UK are attributed to the country of departure). In GHG assessment for airport projects it is therefore typical approach to quantify only the emissions from domestic aviation and international departures. It is important to ensuring a robust GHG assessment that a meaningful contextualisation of GHG emissions is conducted and therefore it makes little sense to compare emissions from all airport arrivals and departures to national budgets and targets in which international arrivals are excluded. This applies throughout the EEA where the EIA Directive applies. As such, Finch should have no bearing on this standardly adopted approach.
Passenger Behaviour and Consumption
An airport is a transport hub which connects people to destinations elsewhere. In order to use an airport, passengers must first travel to it and therefore emissions associated with passenger travel to and from an airport is normally included in airport GHG assessments. Airports offer a range of additional services for passengers (e.g. food and drink, retail and wellbeing) which results in the consumption of products which have GHG emissions associated with them. These are not normally included in airport GHG assessment for EIA, as are any emissions associated with the activity of passengers at their downstream destinations. Attempting to assess such emissions is vastly uncertain and is unlikely to represent a likely significant effect unless a) it is known or can be demonstrated that emissions from passengers at or downstream of the airport are larger than they would be at home or any other location and b) it is known that those passengers would not have travelled to the same locations using another airport or means of travel. It does not seem credible that either a) or b) could be reliably evidenced and therefore it remains a robust and appropriate position to leave these emissions outside the boundary of an airport GHG footprint.
Overall, time will tell as various airport development projects pass through the UK Town and Country Planning or Development Consent Order processes, but it is unlikely that the recent Finch judgement on Scope 3 GHG emissions in EIA will have any major implications on the current approach to assessing GHG emissions for major UK airport projects.
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