Britain's Climate Change Committee says Heathrow should only expand if airlines pay to fully address their emissions, including buying engineered carbon dioxide removal. The advice would add roughly £150 to a return flight to Alicante and £400 to a New York trip by 2050, with costs phased in over 25 years. The CCC argues that current policy would break the UK's carbon budgets and make net zero by 2050 impossible. Critics, including Friends of the Earth and the Tyndall Centre, say sustainable aviation fuel and carbon removal are too unproven to justify a third runway. The government is not bound to follow the advice, but ignoring it would put future carbon budgets under more pressure.
