Greenpeace response to the Department for Transport's consultation "Adding capacity at Heathrow Airport"

Greenpeace believes that if the Government is serious about tackling climate change, there should be no question of increasing the number of flights coming in and out of Heathrow Airport. Instead the Government should be radically rethinking its out-of-date policy on aviation, implementing strategies to cap the number of flights at current levels with a view to reducing them in the future and move towards a sustainable, low-carbon transport system.

Greenpeace also considers this consultation process to be seriously flawed: designed to push through a decision that has already been made and without properly taking into account the effect on the environment, or seriously considering alternatives.

However, Greenpeace takes this opportunity to set out its primary concerns below, as though the Government were genuinely seeking views on airport expansion.

This report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy studies scenarios in which practical and realistic steps are taken to curtail oil use in transport. A range of scenarios is examined on a 20-30 year timescale. The authors calculate that with simple transport efficiency measures Britain's dependence on foreign oil can be restricted from an eight-fold increase to a two-fold increase. Oil use could be reduced by developing:

• Vehicles that are more fuel-efficient
  
• The use of alternative transport fuels
  
• A more efficient transport system, ensuring that people and goods are transported in a way that minimises fuel use
  
• Reducing overall travel by road pricing, congestion charging and more home working