Plans to expand Dublin Airport clash with global effort to slow climate change

Even as governments around the world, including Ireland’s, are pushing to reduce carbon emissions to limit climate change and its damage and disruption, Dublin Airport’s operator is proposing a major expansion.

If its plan is approved, and the airport grows to handle more flights and millions more passengers each year, that would mean more greenhouse gas emissions, planning documents say.

The environmental impact assessment report filed by airport operator DAA shortly before Christmas as part of its planning application to Fingal County Council foresees more emissions via four avenues as part of the proposed expansion.

Those are: a temporary bump from the construction work, and longer-lasting impacts from getting millions more passengers to or from the airport, operating the expanded airport, and more planes flying in and out of the airport.

Of those four, “aviation emissions account for most of the overall emissions associated with the Proposed Development, accounting >90% in 2034”, according to DAA’s planning application.

The planning documents see greenhouse gas emissions associated with the airport falling in the coming decades, primarily due to more fuel-efficient planes and the planned adoption of “sustainable aviation fuel”.

But with the expansion, emissions from planes using Dublin Airport would be about 24 percent higher than they would have been without it, according to the documents. And there’d be a bit more emissions from the airport and surface transport too.

All this even while the government’s Climate Action Plan 2023 set out “the ambition” of cutting emissions 50 percent by the end of the decade – and climate scientists are sounding the alarm about the speed of changes and the damage they will do.

Local Green Party Councillor Ian Carey said: “Let me be absolutely clear about this, airport expansion is not compatible, in any way, with stopping runaway climate change.”

The case for expansion

DAA’s planning application says the airport is “a strategic national infrastructure asset of critical importance to the Irish economy”.

“It is in the interests of proper planning and sustainable development to facilitate a critical mass of aviation infrastructure at Dublin Airport,” the application says.

That’s “in order to protect and enhance the Airport as a national strategic infrastructure asset for the benefit of the country as a whole, and to enable it to compete with other international hub airports of scale for new routes and connections”. it says.

The airport’s website says it “is Ireland’s principal international transport gateway for trade, inward investment and tourism”.

Of course, it’s not the only hub for Irish trade.

A Department of Transport spokesperson said on Tuesday that about 90 percent of “all our traded goods by volume” are transported by sea.

But, obviously, the airport is important to the country’s economy in a variety of ways.

In November, Fianna Fáil TD Jack Chambers, minister of state at the Department of Transport, indicated that the government supported expanding it.

“Increasing the capacity of Dublin Airport is in line with national aviation policy which recognises the strategic importance of Dublin Airport in meeting national social and economic policy goals,” Chambers said.

DAA “has statutory responsibility for the management, operation, and development of Dublin Airport”, he said. “This includes applying for planning permission for increasing the passenger cap and any infrastructure development at the airport required to support connectivity.”

The airport operator’s 15 December “infrastructure application” proposes a whole bunch of construction work to increase the number of passengers the airport can handle – from 32 million passengers a year to 40 million passengers a year.

Striking a balance

The 2023 Dublin Airport Economic Impact Study makes the case for the airport’s importance to Ireland’s economy.

But other studies, such as the Fiscal Advisory Council’s 2023 report, make the case that climate change – driven by carbon emissions such as those from aviation – are likely to harm the country’s economy.

Natural resources could dwindle, worker productivity could fall, and machinery, equipment and buildings could be damaged by more adverse weather conditions, the report says.

Furthermore, Carey, the Swords-area Green Party councillor, says building an economy reliant on high levels of air travel would mean that future efforts to reduce emissions from air travel, as the climate crisis worsens, could seriously damage the economy.

“From a climate perspective, it’s just immoral not to try and get emissions under control, but also from an economic perspective, like, are we building a house of cards? And that’s going to just come down in the future?” he says.

So how do those balance out? Is the benefit of the increased flights to Ireland’s economy greater than the damage they could do?

A DAA spokesperson highlighted the airport’s role in connecting Ireland to the world, and government policies backing growing those connections. And he indicated that the airport was working to reduce carbon emissions.

“All proposed investments under the Infrastructure Application are in line with our ESG [economic, social and corporate governance] carbon reduction strategies, which will reduce Dublin Airport’s emissions by 51% by 2030, and to net zero by 2050,” he said.

The Dublin Airport Carbon Reduction Strategy says it is committed to “A reduction of 51% by 2030 on a 2016-18 average baseline on thermal and transport emissions”.

But that doesn’t include “Scope 3” emissions, which were 93 percent of emissions associated with the airport in 2019, the document says. Those mostly come from the airplanes, and from passengers and staff getting to and from the airport, it says.

Reducing emissions – but more slowly

Bringing more flights and more passengers to the airport will mean more emissions, according to DAA’s planning application.

But simultaneously, DAA is taking steps to reduce emissions at the airport – and the airline industry is taking steps to reduce emissions globally, it says.

At the airport, the DAA plans to do things like improve insulation, and the energy efficiency of lighting lifts, escalators and heating/cooling systems. It is taking care too, it says, to choose less carbon-intensive construction materials, it says.

It’s also trying to reduce emissions involved in getting passengers to and from the airport, even though it has limited control over this, its application says.

This involves improving bus access to the airport, adding more charging for electric vehicles for passengers and staff at the airport, and other measures.

The flights coming in and out of the airport though, are by far the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

And DAA foresees per-flight emissions falling as well, as airlines – spurred on by the European Emissions Trading System, which puts a value on emissions – buy and put into service more fuel-efficient planes. And as they – pushed by an EU policy – adopt sustainable aviation fuel.

This fuel “can be produced from a number of sources (feedstock) including waste oil and fats, green and municipal waste and non-food crops”, says the website of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the airlines’ trade association.

If the airport makes its changes, and the airline industry does too, per-passenger carbon emissions will fall. But adding more flights and millions more passengers will blunt the beneficial impacts of that progress, DAA’s planning application shows.

There’ll be more emissions associated with the airport and its flights to bring back down through all these efficiency measures.

Keeping the cap

At a November session of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications, DAA chief executive Kenny Jacobs argued that keeping the current cap of 32 million passengers a year wouldn’t reduce emissions in the big picture.

“Caps do not stop flying. They just move the flights some place else,” Jacobs said. “It will not take flights out of the sky.”

If Dublin Airport can’t handle more flights as a hub, then other airports will step in and play that role, Jacobs said.

“A cap at Dublin Airport will just make the airlines move to another big hub airport such as Manchester or Edinburgh,” he said.

That would mean jobs that could have been located at Dublin Airport will go somewhere else, Jacobs said.

Also, airlines probably “would say they would not put their newest aircraft in Dublin, which will not be good for noise and sustainability, and if demand is managed down with an artificial cap, air fares will go up”, he said.

Fianna Fáil Senator Gerry Horkan suggested that, actually, DAA’s proposal to expand from 32 million passengers a year to 40 million passengers a year is not ambitious enough to meet the needs of the country’s growing population and economy.

“Is there not a need to be looking at 50 million or 60 million?” Horkan asked.

“This is not any kind of climate change denial but we are talking about the population increasing. … I am concerned that Dublin Airport will almost be turning away business as soon as it gets the permission for 40 million, assuming that it does,” he said.

Jacobs said that if DAA gets permission to expand, “By the time we build that airport for 40 million passengers, we would nearly need to be in with another application asking where it goes next.”

Indeed, among the documents DAA submitted on 15 December is a chapter on potential future developments.

“The Proposed Development for which the Applicant now seeks permission has been designed to ensure that it does not compromise the ability of the airport to expand to 55mppa passenger throughput at some point in the future,” it says.

Essential and inevitable?

Expanding Dublin Airport, though, is not the only possible future for Ireland, says Carey, the Green Party councillor for the Swords area.

“Ireland has had, you know, direct connection to major hubs in North America and the rest of Europe for about two decades,” he said. “I think, arguably, a level of connectivity higher than that, it’s probably not necessary for many businesses.”

A whole lot of business can be done by Zoom these days, said Ann Graves, a Sinn Féin councillor for the Swords area.

“Is it a case of encouraging people, including our politicians, to – there are some things that you have to do face to face, we understand that, but there are situations where there’s no need for people to travel and they could do their business remotely,” she said.

Of course people do like to take holidays abroad, but they can do that now, without expanding the airport, Carey says. Either by plane – or by ferry, which is far better in terms of carbon emissions.

There have been proposals to link Ireland in with European train networks, via a tunnel from Dublin to Holyhead – or, a bridge from Belfast to Scotland. That could provide quicker plane-less travel from Ireland to Europe than the ferry.

But the privately-backed tunnel project faded away years ago, and a spokesperson for the Department of Transport said on Tuesday that the Irish government has no plans to build such a tunnel.

As for then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s bridge idea, that was scrapped, and the Irish government isn’t aware of any current plans for a bridge linking Northern Ireland to Scotland, the Department of Transport spokesperson said.

Demand has grown for ferry services linking Ireland to Europe, though, the spokesperson said. And in response companies have added routes in recent years.

About 10 percent of passengers travelling to and from Ireland are transported by sea, according to the Department of Transport spokesperson.

Ferries and trains may become more attractive to travellers between Ireland and Europe as the cost of air travel increases – as most expect it to with the introduction of more pricey sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

“How much more expensive is SAF now in comparison? Is it twice the price?” Sinn Féin TD Martin Kenny asked minister of state Jack Chambers at a July meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications.

“It is much more. It is three to ten times as much,” Chambers replied.

“The trajectory is obvious; it is going to get more expensive to fly,” Kenny said.

Fine Gael Senator Regina Doherty asked “are there any proposals in Ireland or the EU to support the cost of travel with price supports?”

But Chambers said “we have a liberalised deregulated market in aviation … Under the EU regulations, it would not be possible to intervene.”

What’s next

Now that DAA has submitted its application to expand to Fingal County Council, planners there are accepting “observations” from the public on it, until 29 January.

The council has not replied to a query sent on 5 January on how much weight its planners give to a proposed development’s impacts on carbon emissions when evaluating a planning application.

But a spokesperson from the national Office of the Planning Regulator said that “The Government’s objective for the transition to a carbon neutral society and economy is integrated into the planning system through a range of legislative and policy measures.”

“These form part of the considerations of a planning authority in deciding whether to grant or refuse planning permission for a development,” the OPR spokesperson said.

But they can still grant planning permission if the benefits outweigh the potential negative climate impacts, he said.

Aside from climate considerations, Graves, the Swords-area Sinn Féin councillor, said local residents have a host of concerns about Dublin Airport’s current and future operations.

“Nobody wants to stand in the way of progress, you know, we live beside the airport, it’s one of our biggest ratepayers etcetera etcetera, great employer, loads of people working there,” Graves said.

“But it’s such a huge application for change, when they’re not addressing the issues that are already existing,” she said, relating to noise and night-time flights.

“Nobody wants, you know, business to be halted, or to stop in any way or people going on holidays, you know, we all deserve a break,” she said. “But at the same time, do it in a measured way.”

CORRECTION: At 11.05, on 10 Jan. 2023, the line “A DAA spokesperson did not respond to those questions directly” was deleted from this article.