Heathrow costs, island airports and a critical look at aviation biofuels

9th January, 2009

We’ve returned from the Christmas break ready for a new year of campaigning to reduce aviation’s environmental effects!

The need to account for the external cost of air transport continues to be a key theme for us, and we’ve uploaded a new story to our website about the possible cost to the public purse of rebuilding the schools that would be demolished if the proposed third runway at Heathrow was to go ahead.

The year’s first request for the AEF library came from a student looking at whether Boris’s island airport would be a good alternative to Heathrow expansion. She was surprised to discover that it’s not really his idea: we have files on proposed schemes for a new airport in the Thames Estuary going back as far as the 1980s.

And following several trails towards the end of last year of using biofuels in civilian aircraft, we’ve been taking a look at whether alternative fuels are really all they’re cracked up to be, with a new article by AEF Council member Jeff Gazzard.