European airport expansion plans overshoot Paris-aligned carbon budgets by up to 2.8 times, T&E report finds

A new Transport & Environment report tests expansion plans and traffic forecasts at 20 major European airports against a Paris-aligned 1.7C carbon budget. Every airport overshoots its fair share, even after accounting for sustainable aviation fuels and more efficient aircraft. Planned growth would add 225 million tonnes of CO2 by 2050, with Lisbon, Porto, and Dublin showing the largest relative overshoots. Most of these airports exhaust their carbon budget by the 2030s, and Malaga does so within eight years. The report argues that efficiency gains cannot offset traffic growth, and that approving expansion beyond a carbon budget exposes governments to legal risk under Europe's climate obligations. It also points to aviation tax exemptions and weak carbon market coverage as structural drivers. The full report includes the methodology for converting national carbon budgets into per-airport limits, plus country-level examples like Heathrow and the proposed Lisbon airport.