According to the total nonsense that poured forth out of Rachel Reeves over the last day or two, sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) will make the expansion of Heathrow airport 'green'. This, it has to be said, is utter nonsense.
Firstly, that's because SAF is still not green, and even if it were used, there would still be more flights than are compatible with any green objective this country might legally have. This incredibly basic logic appeared to be beyond her comprehension.
Secondly, as the FT notes:
Fossil fuels will account for more than three-quarters of fuel used by airlines beyond 2040 — according to the British government's own projections — undermining Rachel Reeves' claims that new technologies will turn aviation green.
The UK chancellor said on Thursday that “sustainable aviation fuels” are a “game-changer” in the debate over airport expansion, as she forecast that flights could take off from a new runway at Heathrow by 2035.
In fact, if SAF were to be the main fuel at Heathrow and elsewhere within the UK aviation sector by the time this runway will supposedly be in use, it has been estimated that half of all UK agricultural land would have to be dedicated to growing the crops required to produce them.
Using Reeves' logic, it would be a terrible shame that many in the country would go unfed as a result and that the possibility of a healthy diet would be beyond the economic reach of the vast majority in the country, but the green fuel to power the excessive holiday flights taken by approximately 15% of the UK population (who happen to almost entirely overlap with the richest in the country) would be available.
As ever, Reeves is lying.
As always, Reeves is more than willing to ignore reality. To that extent, at least, she reveals that she paid attention in her economic classes, having very obviously absorbed the instructions her Oxford professors no doubt gave her.
And, as ever, Reeves' causal indifference to most people is glaringly apparent.
No wonder young people are unenamoured of politics when Reeves is supposedly the best we have to offer.
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I dont profess any deep insight into ‘sustainable’ fuels but I suggest that given the sorts of quantities of energy that the modern world demands anyone who thinks we can carry on as normal using renewable alternatives needs to look at reality hard, or more likley has chosen not to do so.
Sustainable fuel at a scale that makes a meaningful difference to total emissions? A pipe dream. Worse, it is a smoke screen. A fictional techno fix.
As is carbon capture and storage, at a scale that makes a difference to overall levels of atmospheric carbon. Perhaps one day, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
It is all political smoke and mirrors, chasing the mirage of “growth” this year, next year, sometime, never.
On present performance, can Starmer or Reeves have any real hope of winning the next general election? Do they really want to clear the way for Reform? And in the meantime, lives are immiserated.
Andrew, regarding your last point, I don’t think they care. They are rich, white and privileged – they will be fine.
Thanks for this, Andrew. These are my impressions of it all too right down to the parallel with carbon capture.
I question what makes sustainable aviation fuel sustainable. It can’t be the need to use the minimum 50% non-renewable, climate-damaging supplementary fuel that it’s blended with. It also can’t be the need (as Richard points out) to dedicate so much agricultural land, perpetuating monoculture, soil erosion and sequestering land that could grow food to feed people. Must be something else but I can’t put my finger on it. I wonder what answer our leaders have.
I cannot see how a prime minister who can’t do politics, allied with a Chancellor who can’t do economics, if they are still in post – with their ruins left behind them – should even think of running in a General Election. How is their party allowing this?
Was it really her Oxford professors who taught her her brand of economics, or is the process more subtle?
It really is what universities teach – very loudly, very clearly, all the time – and if you argue you fail.
Gary Stevenson says he lied on his exam papers.His professor congratulated him for doing so.
“No wonder young people are unenamoured of politics when Reeves is supposedly the best we have to offer.”
Go out side and pick somebody at random……..they could do a better job than Rachel from accounts.
The point is – she is NOT supposed to do a good job. She is there to keep the banking show on the road. She was groomed to do this and is delivering the results.
There are a myriad of “Rachel-from-accounts” all groomed & any one of them could do what the current drone is doing.
& if there was a No 9 bus incident (not advocating that btw) a groomed drone would replace her.
The system is the problem – R-F-A is just a system output designed to keep the system going.
Thank you and well said, both.
My only quibble with Mike is that the City gossip has her as Rachel from customer services and complaints (at HBOS). Former colleagues, one a fellow customer services team manager and the other customer services supervisor two levels higher than the pair, have explained what they all did. Something about expenses, too, as in the Commons some years later. Her Linked In entry for HBOS just says retail banking, not the exact role she performed.
Current and former Bank of England staff, not just the boss, smile when asked about her stint there.
Best person qualified to be chancellor ever, according to the Grauniad? Don’t think so.
And the cracks are showing
Col’ Smithers – most amusing.
One concludes that dear Rachel was not, perhaps the sharpest knife in the drawer – perhaps confirmed on current performance. As for Rachel from customer services & complaints – begs the question: which group of “customers” is she servicing now? Is she meeting expectations? and who, ultimately pulls her strings? (I’m guessing it is a collective effort).
Should Rachel not meet her SLA – I wonder who would be her replacement?
🙂
The cracks are appearing in Reeves’s performance because she avoids challenges to her arguments. OfWat has been challenged in its policy in regard to Thames Water by a group of MP’s who want nationalisation but we won’t get Reeves explaining why this time is different from the extensive nationalisation the immediate post-war Labour government implemented.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/31/mps-demand-ofwat-puts-thames-water-special-measures
Reeves is simply behaving like a child who knows it can’t justify its behaviour so runs off or stomps out of the room!
Just found some kerosene to pour on the fire:
https://bristoliver.substack.com/p/better-living-through-geometry
Growth = we need growth – Rachel from accounts pictured infront of an MRI – need a lot of maths to design one of those.
Extract: “UK government is to cut back a hugely successful programme designed to encourage teenagers to take up higher-level maths courses, …………. The Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, which has been running since 2018, helps state schools in England teach A-level maths, further maths and a core maths programme that provides “maths for life” skills, such as statistics and finance”
……………yes LINO have scored yet another goal – it’s a cracker – striaght into their own net – what a team! they really know what they are doing.
Quite literally, all she did this week was another backfire. And no one now believes anything she says.
Hi Richard, not sure if you caught question time last night (I tend to just watch for entertainment purposes if nothing else is on – the level of political debate is a shambles). I noted this topic came up with the question of is ‘growth and going green mutually exclusive?’.
First of all, it would seem all mainstream politicians don’t think this is the case, even though this goes against all logic (on a finite planet like earth where we are already consuming 1.5x the earths resources due to constant growth ambitions).
Secondly, the labour minister from the treasury seemed to offer a unicorn solution, of taking carbon emissions out from other parts of the economy/country, to allow Heathrow to then carry on polluting (even more).
It would seem we are doomed from a climate catastrophe point of view, our leaders really will let s*it hit the fan before they do anything. I would reason we should probably be aiming for de-growth, as well as net reduction of carbon in the atmosphere, if we have any reasonable chance of surviving the climate catastrophe oncoming.
Maybe the problem is that our politicians are too old, so they don’t care and know they will be gone before it gets really bad? Either way, we the younger generation and those yet to be born are f*cked.
I watch sometimes
I was working last night
You are right – unicorn solutions
It went down the pan when Dimbleby left
“Unrestrained oil-based travel, selfish individualism, conspicuous greed, conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. Genuine sustainability will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process involving more of humankind and much the most of its leaders growing up.”
(From David W. Orr)
P. S. Might change for the better be achieved when leaders, citizens and their children are better and more realistically and enablingly educated?
Educated where and how? I used to work at a state grammar where the guy teaching business and economics constantly moaned about the neoliberal stuff on all specifications, and how behavioural or eco economics was a side issue. I have some students who do business or economics and one of my subjects, sociology. All they seem to know is micro.
Worrying, I agree.
But some of that might help.
George Bernard Shaw unfairly said in his 1905 stage play ‘Man and Superman’ “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Today in regard to the UK’s ignorant and lacklustre politicians “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach but those who can’t teach become politicians!”
She must have known SAF its not believeable – but that doesnt really matter.
The new runway is extremely unlikely to happen. She must know that – but her highlighting it was a headline-catching icon ,to signal her dumb ‘growth’ ‘strategy’.
I bit like Boris’ new estuary airport.
Not generally believing conspiracy theories doesnt mean there are no conspiracies.
It’s very difficult not to relate Starmer’s and Reeves plodding steps to their (and our) oblivion with the money they got from ‘donors’ – pharma, off shore, oil , private healthcare etc.
But even the donors might have expected them to be a little more subtle about it.
Clive Lewis eventually breaks cover and rightly so:-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/31/labour-mp-government-growth-heathrow-party
Just taking Green issues Starmer and Reeves, despite all their previous pledges, are now supporting “Leech Capitalism” leeching on the planet’s sustainability as though the planet offers endless free lunches for the greedy beings who want to become mega-rich! Obviously shilling for “Leech Capitalism” gets you lots of freebies but how many suits/dresses and £3,000 spectacles, etc. do you need in life?
My Green New Deal friend and colleague would seem to have had enough.
The Whips will not be happy.
@ Richard,
I haven’t fully read this yet, I intend to immediately after I post:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/31/keir-starmer-warned-against-approving-rosebank-oilfield-labour-unease-heathrow
I just wanted to draw your and your readers attention to it, before you finish moderating for the day.
It may be a blog in the morning
If a place like Welney was proposed today it wouldn’t get planning permission from the greens. Too much parking for private motor cars on hard standing ground where nothing grows when the cars aren’t there. And no public transport.
That’s how bad the planning system has gotten.
Politely, you aren’t a saint. Most of them did not talk utter nonsense.
There are no fuels with the energy density of fossil fuels and it is highly unlikely we will find any in the meaningful future.
What institutions like Oxford University did was fashion ideas to burn these at a prolific rate to accumulate wealth in the hands of the few.
It was a once in an epoch opportunity to use these fuels wisely to build a sustainable civilisation.
I know you disagree with me that renewable energy is not sustainable (limited supply of rare and earth minerals which it depends on) but the real folly of the elite academic class is that they failed human civilisation by developing ideas to use this valuable resource so unwisely.
Reeves is just another one of the elite puppets. Marinated in the elite thinking marinade and out like a robot droning out their crap.
There is no evidence anywhere of economic growth de-coupling from growth of carbon emissions. Economic growth will send the climate and humanity into oblivion!
Looks like Starmer told the electorate a pack of lies. Here’s the latest likely going back on his word:-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/31/keir-starmer-warned-against-approving-rosebank-oilfield-labour-unease-heathrow
Of course the mainsream media will be the beating the drum that the UK must have “unrestrained” growth. The Times was doing that today in regard to the UK needing to expand airport runway capacity as near to central London as possible. Nothing said about the consequences to the global environment to balance its drum beating! Presumably they believe Trump there’s no climate change threat but are too scientifically illterate to present the argument why this is so. We are being led by donkeys!
Daily Listener
They are rich, white and privileged
Sorryl I am white old and you left out that bit about being middle class. Only got five university degrees so need your insights . All from a working class origin.
I note that the UK stock market is at or close to an all-time high. Investment trusts investing in renewable energy are an exception. Significantly down and trading on a 25%-35% discount. I think that says quite a lot. An old expression is Kiss up, Kick down. Rachel Reeves is doing brilliantly at keeping the markets sweet. While 3-child families go hungry, pensioners freeze and she has better use for money than wasting it on WASPIs. If only she would fall into her Black Hole while she waits for the Growth Fairy..