‘It is important to call out Bristol Airport’s greenwashing for what it is’

The news that Bristol Airport is expanding its number of parking spaces by 2,000 is sadly yet another sign that those at the airport have no understanding of what makes for green transport.

Not least because this expansion on the ground is laying the foundations for expansion in the air – with proposals to hugely increase flights by 23,800 per year.

As we must all surely understand by now, if you provide additional car-centric infrastructure, you’ll get additional car journeys and add further carbon emissions.

And no matter how low-carbon people’s travel to the airport is, if you have 23,800 more flights per year, then the total emissions and climate harms will be massively increased.

Bristol Airport’s new car park will have more than 2,000 car parking spaces – image: Bristol Airport

The airport is calling these changes “transformational”, so it is important to call this out for the greenwashing that it is.

Greenwashing has become increasingly prevalent within the aviation industry, with airlines and even private jet companies claiming to offer “carbon-neutral flights” and “guilt-free travel” when they are doing next to nothing to reduce emissions.

In many cases – through frequent flyer programmes and private jet use – the aviation sector is actively ensuring sky-high emissions.

It’s also really worrying that airports (Bristol included) are currently promoting their misleading plans to become “zero carbon airports”, despite simultaneously trying to hugely increase their air operations.

The increases in emissions that would come if these dangerous expansion plans are allowed to go ahead would be many times greater than reductions achieved by cutting the small proportion of aviation emissions that come from ground operations, rather than planes in the sky.

On the national level, the UK government refuses to take sensible steps to reduce demand for flights overall, by bringing in a frequent flyer levy, kerosene tax (a single driver filling up at the pump pays more tax on their fuel than the entire aviation industry!) and bans on private jets and frequent flyer programmes.

Campaigners say the expansion of Bristol Airport will increase noise and emissions in the surrounding area – photo: Ursula Billington

The Government’s Jet Zero strategy is so dangerous in terms of projected emissions growth that Possible has filed a claim for a judicial review.

The central contention of Bristol Airport Action Network’s strong campaign to stop the airport from expanding was that Bristol Airport is big enough.

Local people objected (and continue to object) to these plans for a reason; the huge increase in emissions and noise pollution.

Since the legal decision to uphold the airport’s appeal and allow the expansion, the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) has come out strongly against airport expansion, recommending that there should be no overall increase in airport capacity.

It’s also a huge problem that when airports apply to expand, the increase in emissions this would cause isn’t assessed in the context that almost all the UK’s other airports are also trying to expand.

So each airport’s expansion plans can get waved through individually, with no consideration that this is part of an even larger and more dangerous expansion across the UK.

By appealing the democratic decision to refuse their expansion plans on climate and noise grounds, Bristol Airport has already demonstrated its lack of concern for the climate emergency.

The expansion would mean an additional 23,800 flights and two million passengers a year, an additional 10,000 car movements a day and an additional one million tonnes of carbon emitted a year.

This is totally scandalous, given the urgent need to reduce emissions to protect people around the world from the dangerous impacts of the climate crisis.

A new campaign has been set up to challenge this by members of Bristol Airport Action Network with community groups opposed to airport expansions around the country.

The No Airport Expansion group will campaign for an immediate moratorium on all airport expansion – and for local objections due to noise and air pollution and harm to the climate to be heard.

There’s no way to fly without producing emissions which harm the climate, and so we need to cut back on flights.

This could be done just by focusing on the small group of people who take most of the flights.

At Possible, our focus is on cutting back on the most irresponsible use of air travel, so we help people to make the case to politicians and airlines for a ban on private jets, an end to frequent flyer programmes, and the introduction of a frequent flyer levy.

We need coordinated action across society – and to call out big polluters like expanding airports –  to win a world that is safer for all of us.

Rob Bryher is an aviation campaigner for We Are Possible and a former Green Party councillor.

Main photo: Stephen Clarke

Read next:

• Bristol Airport protesters: ‘We are watching you’
• Appeal against Bristol airport expansion refused
• Youth activists target airport bus again

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