LATEST NEWS
We’re sorry to say that our judicial review legal challenge against the government’s reckless and irresponsible Jet Zero Strategy has been rejected by the Court of Appeal. That’s the end of our case. Thank you to everyone who has supported us – we’re so sorry we didn’t overturn this dangerous policy.
In 2025, the Environmental Audit Committee said this:
“The Government’s Jet Zero Strategy remains reliant on demand management measures that are as yet insufficient to deliver Net Zero objectives, especially if there is an increase in demand. The strategy relies on far higher costs to industry to abate carbon emissions than are currently seen. It also requires significant carbon savings from the rollout of technology that is yet to be seen on a commercial scale, including more efficient flying and Sustainable Aviation Fuel.”
“Set alongside the Government’s call for an expansion in the aviation sector, this risky approach puts the Government’s delivery on carbon budgets and Net Zero in serious jeopardy.”
Please keep reading to find out more about our campaign against Jet Zero and why it’s not going to get us to Net Zero.
"Set alongside the Government’s call for an expansion in the aviation sector, this risky approach puts the Government's delivery on carbon budgets and Net Zero in serious jeopardy."
Unbelievably, the government’s Jet Zero aviation strategy gives the green light to a huge expansion of flying and airports - and greenhouse gas emissions.
But it relies heavily on alternative fuels – like used cooking oil and green hydrogen. These fuels either don’t yet exist beyond the drawing board or cannot be scaled up quickly enough to stop aviation becoming the biggest source of climate-wrecking emissions in the UK by 2050.
Our Jet Zero video is a simple guide to what’s wrong with the whole strategy.
Our legal case made clear why Jet Zero needs to be rewritten in order to focus on immediate measures to stop any growth of aviation – like stopping all airport expansion plans.
"We estimate that meeting existing UK aviation fuel demand, entirely with energy crops, would require around half of UK agricultural land. Producing sufficient green hydrogen fuel would require 2.4-3.4 times the UK’s 2020 renewable (wind and solar) electricity generation."
The government describes Jet Zero as highly ambitious but everyone else describes it as highly risky!
We know that climate breakdown would be catastrophic. We know we must urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions. And we know the so-called ‘solutions’ in Jet Zero barely exist in reality.
If a doctor tells a smoker that they’ve got lung cancer but says “Carry on smoking, there might be a cure sometime in the future”, is that doctor ‘ambitious’ or ‘irresponsible’?
So should we allow aviation to expand now? Or wait and see if the government’s techno-optimism is justified?
"No airport expansions should proceed until a UK-wide capacity management framework is in place to annually assess and, if required, control aviation sector CO2 emissions and non-CO2 effects."
You can learn more about non-CO2 emissions here. And find out more about the problems with the techno-fixes proposed in Jet Zero in this series of short videos by Green Sky Thinking and these Stay Grounded factsheets. There are more assessments of Jet Zero’s proposals from the Aviation Environment Federation and in a report by the Royal Society. And Possible have proposed a solution – a Frequent Flyer Levy.
And we are so grateful to all our supporters who backed us and our legal team. GALBA will continue to call for an urgent halt to all airport expansions until the are real and large scale solutions to aviation’s greenhouse gas problem.
Leeds Bradford Airport is big enough already