GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
The Myths of Aviation, with Denise Auclair
The airport‑as‑engine of growth story is powerful, but the data tells a different story. We sit down with Denise Auclair, who leads the Travel Smart campaign at Transport & Environment, to unpack a new Europe‑wide study that tracks the real relationship between air traffic and prosperity across 274 regions.
The headline is striking: in much of northern and western Europe, economic growth tends to drive more flying rather than flying driving growth. Once networks mature, extra frequencies deliver diminishing returns, and the old promise of expansion starts to look like a costly habit.
We explore why aviation’s emissions are so hard to tackle and we also dig into tourism balances: when cheap flights pull residents abroad, local economies can lose more than they gain, especially when a small group of frequent flyers accounts for a large share of trips.
Join us as we map a practical route to sustainable travel with Denise: clearer evidence, better choices, and systems that reward time, health, and climate, not just passenger counts.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability. Hosted by Damla Eusler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Guys, the Message on Sustainability, which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damlo from Mira Agency Istanbul and This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester.
SPEAKER_00:This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they communicated, and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
SPEAKER_01:So in this episode, we're going to talk to Denise Auchlair, who is the head of the Travel Smart Campaign for Transport and Environment in Brussels. Denise joined TNE in 2021 to develop and lead the Travel Smart Campaign, a global effort to spark changes towards sustainable travel choices and aviation infrastructure. She brings 15 years of experience in the international impacts of consumption and production, including working on supply chains and developing pathways towards more sustainable economies and societies.
SPEAKER_00:Which makes Denise our perfect guest, because those are all the hot topics for us. Denise's got a transatlantic background, having split her time between the US, France, and Belgium, studied political science and economic relations in Washington, Brussels, and has prior experience in management consulting and public policy research. So, Denise, thank you so much for joining Damler and myself.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, and I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_01:First of all, we always do a bit of an intro so people can get to know the amazing people we're talking to. So, could you tell us how you ended up in your current role and what great mission you're on? Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Well, what I can say is that I was working, I worked a number of years on the global impacts of mining on communities and on the environment. And we came to some discussions on how we should work for broader changes that we need to be able to live in fair and sustainable economies and societies. So we, for example, we were working on a European law that would require companies to that were producing uh smartphones or cars to ensure that when they were buying minerals that went into their products, that that money was wasn't ending up in the hands of armed groups who were harming people in the mining areas. And we decided that we should also be talking, so not only to about the producers of the smartphones, but also about the consumers, so that consumers would be aware about the risks of human rights violations linked to their purchases, but also about the need to reduce new mineral extraction by rethinking levels of consumption of electronic goods. So we made a great video that was about someone who had a smartphone in the pocket of their jacket and the smartphone started talking to them about what was the story behind the everyday product that they were carrying. So when I saw the opportunity to join TE and develop this campaign around sustainable travel choices and also now around aviation infrastructure, then I seized that as a big and important challenge where we could really bring a fresh look and a fresh way of approaching these topics.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant. And so today, very specifically, we're going to be drilling down into a fascinating report that you brought out with the New Economics Foundation, aren't we, Denise? Analyzed 274 European regions and shows, I think this is so fascinating, that that link we always hear about between air traffic growth and economic growth is weaker than some claim. So before we get into that work itself, I know probably with our listeners, you shouldn't need to do this, but just in case they haven't got it today, could you give us a quick explainer on why air travel is such a critical issue and how air travel and emissions are a clear challenge to all of our global and European climate commitments?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Well, I think when when we look at it, so within TNE, we're working across all the different transport modes. And so the particularity with aviation, so to important to know, it's the most climate-intensive form of transport. So that means it's emitting the most carbon emissions. And at the same time, it's also the means of transport that has whose emissions have been growing the fastest. So that's both in the past and potentially in the future. So in Europe, emissions from aviation have more than doubled since 1990. And then they could double again in the future. Earlier this year, we we published a study called Down to Earth, where we looked at the growth projections from Airbus and Boeing and compared that then with the passenger growth, and then concluded that that would more than double by 2050 compared to 2019 if those projections were to materialize. And so comparing that with the European climate targets, we saw, okay, we're facing a real problem. And that is, I think, important to then know that in comparison with other types of other sectors in the economy, you've got some sectors, let's say heating, electricity uh generation, where you can see a downward curve in the emissions. But in transport, there is this trend where emissions are growing, particularly for aviation. So you could say, well, aviation is kind of the problem child when it comes to transport because it's it hasn't yet made that downward curve. It's going in the opposite direction as we really need. And then I think the last thing to know or to remember is that the aviation's problem is is even bigger than is sometimes acknowledged. So you've got carbon emissions, which are yeah, pretty well kind of covered and counted, but planes also emit a whole lot of other types of emissions. So particularly you'd recognize the contrails. So those are the thin line-shaped clouds you see in the sky, and those often have a heat trapping function. Then you have a few other types of emissions, these non-CO2 emissions, as they're called. And those are also responsible then for air pollution, particularly around airports at the time of takeoff and landing. And that includes ultra-fine particles that can have harmful health effects. So essentially, to kind of wrap that up, then aviation has a climate problem that has to do with its growth, the boom in growth and plans for further growth. And the where we are today in terms of clean technologies or cleaner fuels, which is also something that TE is working on, that alone won't be able to solve the problem because with the growth projections, that would outpace the ability of cleaner fuels and technologies to clean up flying.
SPEAKER_01:Turning to report itself and your headlines from the report, it's fascinating how for an increasingly large majority of European regions, airport expansion and increased air travel is a reflection of prosperity and not a driver of growth. What are the implications for that finding? I mean, there's also a key finding on business travel reaching a saturation point and how that is playing out. Tell us about some of these headlines. Yes, I'm happy to do that.
SPEAKER_02:Um, I think first to just to take a step back, that um what we wanted to do with this report was also to bring a new kind of analysis, because in fact you are always hearing that, yeah, if we have more growth in air traffic, more passengers, expanding airports, we're going to have the benefits of economic growth. So we've seen that particularly in the UK, for example, but also in Spain. When the government is talking about airport expansions, approving the expansion of Heathrow with another runway. Um, in in Spain, this is around the Madrid airport in in particular, but also others. There are actually 13 airports that are planned for expansion in in Spain. And so you you can see even in the media these titles that say, you know, the government is making a choice for for more growth. Uh, we're going to to approve and go ahead with this airport expansion. So what we think that what we're seeing is that here we have people that are holding on to an idea that might have been true in the past, but now we're at a different point, at least in Europe. So it all also depends on where you take your starting point. So if you're in a situation where you have limited connections for air travel, then you start expanding routes and you start expanding airports, you're bringing in more people, they're traveling for business, traveling for leisure, then that understandably can be contributing to the economy. But the problem is that we've moved on from the starting point, but the aviation industry keeps on repeating this assumption that more flights equals more growth. But this is no longer the case. And it's in fact it's turned into a kind of pure industry myth. So what we've seen too is that some of this analysis is was also done with a more limited scope, where maybe they were talking about the impact on jobs in the area around the airport, directly linked to the airport. And what we're doing now with this new study is to look as well about the broader dynamics of the different kinds of impact that air traffic and airports can have on the broader economy, also according to the types of passengers and the purpose of flying. So, what we did is we partnered with the New Economics Foundation, so based in the UK. They'd already done a report on the situation in the UK. And we said, okay, uh, this is really interesting. Let's have a look at what's happening across Europe. So this study is really the first Europe-wide study looking at these dynamics and really putting into question and saying, let's get up to date here. What is the relationship between growth in air traffic and growth in the economy? And so, indeed, what the conclusions of the report, so it looked not only at just the kind of national level or even the European level, this is also a limitation of some of the studies to date, but it looked into specific regions as well to make to make some conclusions about the fact that there can be differing types of impacts depending on the characteristics of a given region. And uh that's also something that has often, let's say, been overlooked. So to say, no, there's always this kind of positive relationship, well, no, there are different situations in different regions, and it's important to look into that. And so one of the main findings was that in over half of the regions, and these are regions that are defined by the European kind of statistical uh method of a definition of regions, what we found is that in over half of the regions analyzed, there was actually a different dynamic going on, which is to say that economic prosperity was driving more flying. And it wasn't the other way around. So the air traffic growth is more often than a consequence of prosperity than the cause of it. And this is particularly the case in northern and and uh western uh Europe. So basically, what we're also looked carefully at is a kind of causal effect and which direction is that causality. And in previous studies, you might have had the case that there was a kind of correlation. So you'd say, okay, here you find some growth in air traffic, and you also find a growth in the economy. But what the specificity and and the new contribution of this study is really looking at what direction is that causality uh running in. And so beyond then that kind of first level of the direction of that relationship, then we looked more carefully uh into uh two aspects for the purpose of flying. So one was on the business travel, and the second then on uh on the leisure. And what we found is also an important concept in the study is looking at saturation, the idea of saturation. And I think that it's something that's can you know be understood intuitively, which is to say, again, let's go back to our starting point. You can think about when you're first expanding an airport and you get a positive return. So then if you've got one flight going from one economic center to another, that might be bringing a lot of benefit. But as you continue to add a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, let's say you go up to a tenth, the more flights you're adding, and it's quite possible that each additional flight is bringing less benefit. So that's the kind of decline in the additional benefit. And so saturation then is really this point where adding more flights brings little or even no economic benefit, or might even lead to a negative situation that I can I can come back to. And I think that's that's really illustrated then by the situation with business travel. So this is, I think, quite a remarkable evolution within Europe. You have the in the majority of countries, you've got now a sustained sustained decline in the number of business passengers. So we looked at that, that's been in the headlines recently in Germany, where they've had a 40% drop just in the last five years of their business passengers. Why is this the case? I think, you know, uh not not surprisingly to say that the pandemic was was a big milestone in that where a lot of businesses realized that uh some of that travel that they were undertaking was actually unnecessary. They could also do business online with virtual tools. Of course, there now we have quite quite a lot uh in in Europe of rail alternatives as well. So there's been this decline, and we've seen this convergence then. So it's not only Germany, but both nationally in Germany and in France, and as well at the airport level, for example, in London Heathrow or in Barcelona, you have the market share of business passengers out of all passengers has declined from between 30 to 40 percent to roughly 20%. So what does this mean? Well, the business air travel passengers are generally generally considered to be those that that also can contribute more to the national economy in the sense that when you take a flight for business purpose, you're going, you're you're developing your relations, you're making contacts, maybe you're signing contracts, and you're bringing that back to your country. And that's then you're you're bringing back and and bringing in an economic value. Whereas then for so the fact that those types of passengers are are declining, this means that the the argument that is put forward when it comes to, for example, airport expansion to say, well, we're going to be really generating all of this new business activity. In fact, this is no longer the case.
SPEAKER_00:I, Denise, honestly, that I find all of this incredibly fascinating. I'm very quite jealous, actually, that you get to do this all day. And so there's a kind of surreality to some of this, isn't there? Because uh, you know, like many people, I totally get what you're saying, and and I occasionally have to fly. I I don't do it particularly willingly. I'm far from a frequent flyer. But being from the UK, I have a particularly surreal take on air travel, which is I I you just don't see anywhere else. So if you start a flight here in the UK, it's usually very early in the morning, everybody's drinking pints of beer, some horrible time in the morning. And I, as an environmentalist, I s I stand in the in the kind of security line and and sort of I'm I'm waiting for the beer thing to happen. I'm seeing everybody um taking their belts off and taking their laptops out and stuff. And I know for our local airport, 80% of the traffic is domestic journeys of people going on holiday and spending their money somewhere else. And so it's absolutely mad I I find it absolute madness to to then hear somebody literally from a regional economic strategy perspective talk about this economic engine that is our airport. And I said, I've just been there, I've seen everybody going somewhere else to spend all their money, it's madness. Um but I won't I was gonna ask you about tourism, but I think you've answered that really well. I would like to just before Damala's gonna pick up on on what you think we need to do next, but I'm sure many people wonder, what do you say to those, and I know this is the argument here in the UK, who say, yeah, it'll be okay, it'll be okay to do this expansion because sustainable aviation fuel is going to come over the horizon and save everything. What what are your thoughts on that, Danaev?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I I I'm happy to to respond to that. I did want to say one other thing about the the tourism. And I think that links to the the question of the, you know, which way is this causality relationship going in? The idea that prosperity is actually driving increased air traffic. And I think that is to say that, you know, as incomes, let's say generally the general level is increasing within a country, then people start to take more holiday trips abroad. And they may be also incentivized to do that. There may be advertising, there may be the low fares. So it's really this idea, then, that the there are increasing numbers of people leaving the country. And so what we looked at as a measure of that was to look at the spending from tourism or what they call travel services and the balance of payments. And I think you you you particularly do find that in the UK, uh in Belgium, in Germany, that you've got more money than essentially leaving the country than coming into it. It's also the case in Ireland, where they've got a huge debate. And I was looking at that, and they've got just under, I think, uh 20 million passengers that are that are coming, but that are also going. And indeed, when they're looking at, okay, now we want to expand the the Dublin airport. And the question is, well, you know, do do have we properly studied the the impact of what's going to happen, happen there. And and so you've got the these countries that are in this this kind of travel services deficit. And indeed, it's it's then an I think also the a question of who's flying there in the UK. That the New Economics Foundation did some very specific analysis to show not only were there three times more people leaving the UK, residents leaving for holidays abroad and spending their money overseas, but also that that in terms of number of journeys, you had a number of people that were frequent flyers, making up this very small minority of the population, but they're basically the ones that are using then the airports and these expanded services as well. So the question also of who's actually benefiting, where are these benefits going to, the distribution is also an important question. And so what we what we say on the sustainable fuels. So in TE, we say, okay, we're working for a sustainable future for aviation, for different types of transport, for cleaner mobility. So we are working on trying to also accelerate the availability of cleaner fuels. Today it's the case that a lot of the what's called the sustainable aviation fuels are risk being not that sustainable, particularly if they're based on crop sources. So in effect, they're kind of competing with crops that could be used for food purposes. And then you also have more like waste sources, but that could be also used for other purposes than aviation, which again is highly energy intensive. That's the specificity. And so what we say, and this is the subject of our Down to Earth report earlier this year, we were directly comparing, well, you know, is are these more sustainable fuels the answer? Can we can we solve it? Is this the silver bullet? And what we see is that there will be uh an increasing contribution to making aviation go in a more sustainable direction. But there's no chance that these fuels could actually cover, especially if there is this growth dynamic. So it's going to take time for these more sustainable fuels to scale up. We're advocating particularly for what we call e-fuels that come from renewable energy sources and not from bioenergy sources. Those are still not even yet in the production phase. And I think we're around right now, somewhere like 1 to 2% of the fuel use that is covered by these types of fuels. So sometimes I say, well, look, you know, aviation is right now an industry that's basically 98 to 99% dependent on fossil fuels. That's not a good place to be. And so what we're saying is that we need a combination of different types of measures, you know, to try to make sure that this can be a sustainable mode of travel. And that includes being willing to rethink some of the, you know, accepted claims or accepted assumptions that really uh no longer hold?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you said scaling, and it's very important, especially when we talk about aviation, cities, growth, and so on. So maybe, I mean, just maybe, we should not only talk about upscaling, but right scaling as well. So actions. What recommendations are played out in the report? And how do you think we should shift our messaging on air travel and airport expansion in particular? I mean, do we need to move far, far away from the idea that airports and economic growth are the one and the same?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes. No, I think that's that's an essential point. And this question of scaling is also so an interesting way of talking about that has is the experience in the Netherlands right now, around the Amsterdam Skipple airport. So this is not so much covered in our study, but to say what they're looking at there is they talk about the balance between the airport and the surrounding communities and the kind of societal, the health considerations, the environmental considerations. And so as to say that also if if an airport wants to have the social license to operate, basically to say, is it accepted in the community where it's located? Well, there has to be a better balance between the decision on the scale, the type of operations that are run, and the needs and the priorities and the rights of the citizens and the surrounding communities. And there in at the Amsterdam Airport, they've had ongoing discussions over a number of months, even the past years, and have made taken some decisions on lowering the capacity, the allowable number of flights, so that there is that is going towards this idea of balance, a better balance. But coming back to the study, so I think what what we've said is so we have the study that has been undertaken by a New Economics Foundation that we've commissioned, and the the author, Alex Chapman, has done really a fabulous job in bringing forward this very original, very new analysis. And what we've done as TNE is that we've looked at then also the the developments happening across Europe, particularly when it when it relates to airport expansion. We work with national uh partners in a number of countries. So I've already mentioned in in Ireland, in Spain, in the UK, uh there are also some plans for expanding the uh Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. So it's really a live debate across a number of countries, here where I'm based, of course, Brussels Airport as well. So one thing that we're saying is essentially in line from the findings by by Alex Chapman and the New Economics Foundation, which is to say that the analysis that's underpinning today's decisions around levels of air traffic and the capacity of airports is based on outdated, overgeneralized data. And so it's important that that be recognized, that there be a pause then in this planning. So to take a step back and say, okay, what do we really know? And very interestingly, so in the UK, they they have gone through that in the past weeks and months. The UK Parliament has held hearings to look at both the environmental implications of airport expansion, but also the the evidence for uh claims of economic growth. And they concluded, and they've just concluded that in the in the last days or or weeks, that there isn't that the government is not bringing sufficient evidence of economic benefits of airport expansion. So I think this is quite significant, I mean, to to basically have that conclusion. So we're looking, we're aiming at having a similar type of pause and review uh in different countries. Then when you look at the analysis, we have a really nice map uh in the study and in our shorter briefing that also shows then the this kind of differentiation between regions and and also on a color basis, and coming back to this concept of saturation, that saturation is basically being approached or already reached in a number of major European capitals, precisely where there are airport expansion uh plans. So, as I mentioned, Dublin, Madrid, Brussels, Paris, London, of course. And so that really this is uh puts into question and and would go in the direction of putting an end to these projects because they're not the the this growth in air traffic and air connectivity is uh shown that it's not driving a growth then in in GDP per capita. But also there's this aspect of tourism, that that the the kind of quality of the the net uh flows of tourism spending is is not there. And the business travel demand is is also kind of uh reaching its maximum. So definitely then, particularly where there are these projects, to really you know put a stop to those. And if on on a particularly, let's say, to to look uh more closely and and look at what the data is is saying there, and and it looks to be that these these projects are not justified. And then the final one I would come to is I think and really important also then for our message and the way of talking about these issues. What we're talking about is about a quality of transport connectivity. Yeah. So we're talking about sustainable connectivity, but we're not only talking about air travel. We're talking about travel across different types of modes because sometimes there's this risk that we we stay in a kind of vacuum if we're only talking about air travel. We say, oh no, it's good or it's bad to have more or Less and we have to have this connection and that connection. But in fact, we're we're fortunate today that in Europe there are different options and alternatives for reaching a number of destinations. And so what we are taking issue with is a model that looks at air travel and says, well, we need to get the numbers. We just got to keep growing. We've got to have a lot of passengers. This is all about volume. We need to expand, expand. What we're saying is that there can be a place for different types of travel. We have to work also on the sustainability of the different modes. And today the air travel is in or is still at an early stage there and the work that needs to be done. But also when it comes to tourism, then you can also encourage tourism by different means. If you are arriving by uh not by air, where it's shown that also the the the there are increasing numbers of short trips. So in fact, you're the the tourist is spending a higher percentage of the trip value on just on the transport, and that leaves less for spending in the country. So that we're looking at, okay, if you arrive, you have a bit longer stays. You can arrive also by rail, you can arrive perhaps by by car, looking also at cleaner technologies available for road uh travel, that that uh that you are focusing more on the quality of the tourism, on the quality of the connectivity, on the choices that people should uh should have. And and I think that is an important way of looking at it. And I've even heard I was in a discussion with uh some airports uh in in the last months, there's also a recognition of the problem of over-tourism, which we won't go into here, but definitely, you know, there are some locations that just are being suffocated by the number of tourists who are arriving. And so even there are some airports that are saying we should be going more in the direction of quantity, uh, excuse me, of quality rather than quantity. And I think that's the right way of looking at it. We're we're not trying to say, you know, that this is all black and white and you know, yes to this and no to this, et cetera. But what we're saying is we're we're probably not really approaching this in the right way. If we're really talking about our strategies for air transport, connectivity, but also our strategies for sustainable connectivity as a whole across Europe, or if we're talking about tourism, we should really be looking at where the value is, where it isn't, where those relationships are. We should have an honest discussion about that and try to see where we can have strategies for a better, a better quality value across travel, transport connectivity, and across tourism.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant. And well, if we and if we could go into it, Denise, I can't help but feel the economics of the whole landscape are kind of screwed up because if it cost me 40 pounds to get to Brussels by a cheap flight versus 340 pounds to get there by train, something isn't right. But anyway, we're gonna have to wrap it up because it's so fascinating and we keep going. But we have one last question for you, if that's all right. Which is our is called our network is ironically called do not smile, and because we know that we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So the question is, Denise, what object, place, or person always makes you smile?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I guess I would say definitely seeing the sun shining always puts a smile on my face.
SPEAKER_00:That's beautiful. And well, have you got sunshine with the snow in Brussels today? Have you got a blend of the two?
SPEAKER_02:Not not today, but you know, some people complain that there's not enough sunshine in in Brussels, and and that's sometimes the case. But the good thing is with the the ocean climate that it's it's often changing. So it's not sunny now, but maybe maybe in a couple hours.
SPEAKER_00:The sun will come out tomorrow, which would be a great line in the musical. Hey, so that's been a fascinating Denise. Thank you so so much. That's been really fascinating and a topic I feel particularly passionate about. So I'm glad we got to talk about it. Damler, time to close this up.
SPEAKER_04:Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability, hosted by Damla Ozler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
