Rishi Sunak’s claim that his decision to issue 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences is “entirely consistent” with the transition to a net-zero economy is a groundbreaking one. Somehow, the Prime Minister has apparently found a way to “max out the opportunities” in the UK’s fossil fuel industry in a way that will tackle global warming.
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However, unfortunately, his assertion is entirely at odds with the views of eminent experts. In 2021, the International Energy Agency warned there should be no new investments in oil, gas and coal from that year onwards; Lord Deben, ex-chair of the Climate Change Committee, the UK Government’s official independent advisers, wrote in a recent article in The Scotsman that there could be “no new oil exploitation… if the world is to keep global heating to levels which can be handled”; and the government’s former “net-zero tsar”, Conservative MP Chris Skidmore, who led a review of UK climate policy, condemned Sunak’s announcement as being “on the wrong side of the future economy that will be founded on renewable and clean industries and not fossil fuels”.
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