The Grauniad:
Council set to reject Stansted expansion
The dangers of climate change will be used this week as a reason to ditch a plan to double passenger numbers at London Stansted airport, the home of Ryanair. A local council is expected to turn down planning permission, partly on the grounds that the Stern review and other studies have highlighted the danger of rising carbon emissions.
The move will be a huge blow to operator BAA and its new parent company Ferrovial of Spain, which paid £10.5bn for the airports operator earlier this year. It also highlights the contradiction in government policies between encouraging aviation - a major carbon dioxide polluter - and trying to halt global warming.
Planning officers from Uttlesford district council, the local authority for Stansted, have recommended the application be dumped when the development control committee meets on Wednesday. "The importance of climate change as a global issue and the mounting research evidence to support a policy review has increased in recent months. Given all the emerging information, coupled with the timing of the Stern review in the course of the application, it is considered that it would be premature to grant planning permission," says their report.
There should at least be clarification by the government as to whether part of its response to Stern and other recent research will be to withdraw or amend its air transport white paper, they add.
Council officers also refer to last year's Tyndall Centre report showing that the rapid growth in air travel threatens to wipe out the other savings in carbon emissions; and they highlight a recent report from Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute which called on the government to confront the contradictions in its policies. The institute concluded: "Unless the rate of growth in flights is curbed the UK cannot fulfil its commitments on climate change." The council officers have recommended rejection on eight other grounds too.
The expansion of Stansted's terminal building would be expected to lift the total number of regular passenger and cargo annual flights through the Essex airport from 186,000 to 265,000.