Renewable energy is often pitched as cheaper to produce than fossil fuel energy. To quantify whether this is true, we have been studying the financial impact of expanding wind energy in the UK. Our results are surprising.
From 2010 to 2023, wind power delivered a benefit of £147.5 billion — £14.2 billion from lower electricity prices and £133.3 billion from reduced natural gas prices. If we offset the £43.2 billion in wind energy subsidies, UK consumers saved £104.3 billion compared with what their energy bills would have been without investment in wind generation.
UK wind energy production has transformed over the past 15 years. In 2010, more than 75% of electricity was generated from fossil fuels. By 2025, coal has ceased and wind is the largest source of power at 30% – more than natural gas at 26%.
This massive expansion of UK offshore wind is partly due to UK government subsidies. The Contracts for Difference scheme provides a guaranteed price for electricity generated, so when the price drops below this level, electricity producers still get the same amount of money.
The positive contribution of wind power to reducing the UK’s carbon footprint is well known. According to Christopher Vogel, a professor of engineering who specialises in offshore renewables at the University of Oxford, wind turbines in the UK recoup the energy used in their manufacture, transport and installation within 12-to-24 months, and they can generate electricity for 20-to-25 years. The financial benefits of wind power have largely been overlooked though, until now.
Our study explores the economics of wind in the energy system. We take a long-term modelling approach and consider what would happen if the UK had continued to invest in gas instead of wind generation. In this scenario, the result is a significant increased demand for gas and therefore higher prices. Unlike previous short-term modelling studies, this approach highlights the longer-term financial benefit that wind has delivered to the UK consumer.
The authors’ new study quantifies the financial benefit of wind v fossil fuels to consumers. Igor Hotinsky/Shutterstock
Central to this study is the assumption that without the additional wind energy, the UK would have needed new gas capacity. This alternative scenario of gas rather than wind generation in Europe implies an annual, ongoing increase in UK demand for gas larger than the reduction in Russian pipeline gas that caused the energy crisis of 2022.
Given the significant increase in the cost of natural gas, we calculate the UK would have paid an extra £133.3 billion for energy between 2010 and 2023.
There was also a direct financial benefit from wind generation in lower electricity prices – about £14.2 billion. This combined saving is far larger than the total wind subsidies in that period of £43.2 billion, amounting to a net benefit to UK consumers of £104.3 billion.
Wind power is a public good
Wind generators reduce market prices, creating value for others while limiting their own profitability. This is the mirror image of industries with negative environmental consequences, such as tobacco and sugar, where the industry does not pay for the increased associated healthcare costs.
This means that the profitability of wind generators is a flawed measure of the financial value of the sector to the UK. The payments via the UK government are not subsidies creating an industry with excess profits, or one creating a financial drain. They are investments facilitating cheaper energy for UK consumers.
Wind power should be viewed as a public good — like roads or schools — where government support leads to national gains. The current funding model makes electricity users bear the cost while gas users benefit. This huge subsidy to gas consumers raises fairness concerns.
Wind investment has significantly lowered fossil fuel prices, underscoring the need for a strategic, equitable energy policy that aligns with long-term national interests. Reframing UK government support as a high-return national investment rather than a subsidy would be more accurate and effective.
Sustainability, security and affordability do not need to be in conflict. Wind energy is essential for energy security and climate goals – plus it makes over £100 billion of financial sense.
Colm O’Shea, Researcher, Renewable Energy, Geography Department, UCL and Mark Maslin, UCL Professor of Earth System Science and UNU Lead for Climate, Health and Security, UCL
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
Under pressure Chancellor Rachel Reeves has pledged support to the oil and gas sector through the planned North Sea strategy.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the upcoming North Sea strategy will be published before the Autumn Budget.
In her speech at the Labour Party conference she highlighted that “I talked about homegrown energy, and that is renewables, but it is also in the North Sea as well” before adding she is “not a zealot of green energy”.
Meanwhile, energy secretary Ed Miliband is gearing up to use his speech on Wednesday to attack a “global network of right-wing billionaires” looking to stop net zero developments, and push for unity across the clean energy sector.
“We are going to be reliant on oil and gas for many years to come,” Reeves added, citing a preference to use oil and gas from the UK rather than importing from overseas.
“I am really committed to boosting our energy security, because increasingly energy security is national security, so investing in homegrown energy is really important,” she added.
dizzy: Looks like the Labour Party are shitting on their climate commitments.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsNeo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
“We are going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea”, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said recently. Her promise to “maximise extraction” sets up a clash between political ambitions, economic reality and geological limits.
Reform UK has also said drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a “day one” priority. But even if the Conservatives or Reform were to be elected and lifted the current moratorium on new exploration licenses, there might not be the promised prizes of oil and gas under the seabed – or enough appetite from investors – to deliver on that promise.
BP, in those days British Petroleum, first extracted gas from under the North Sea in 1967. It marked the start of what was to become, for decades, one of the most valuable sectors of the UK economy, with more than 400 separate oil and gas fields developed to date.
But production peaked in 1999 and the North Sea now produces less than half as much as in its heyday.
It is now a “mature” basin: most of the biggest and easiest-to-develop fields have already been discovered and depleted. What remains are smaller, sometimes more remote, and often more technically challenging or expensive resources and reserves.
This is typical of ageing oil and gas provinces, where production declines even as operating costs rise. New projects must compete with oil and gas extracted from other parts of the world where it is easier and cheaper and more appealing to investors.
Finding oil and gas
Historically, only one in eight exploration wells in the North Sea led to a field producing oil and gas. That ratio has improved: between 2008 and 2017, a bit more than one in four wells led to a commercial success.
But far fewer wells are being drilled today. Even with the advances in technology, such as improved geophysical imaging which allows us to better define opportunities ahead of drilling, the big discoveries were probably made decades ago.
UK exploration wells vs offshore fields by year:
The number of exploration wells is down hugely from its peak in the 1980s and early 90s. Mark Ireland / NSTA
The UK government’s North Sea Transition Authority estimates there could still be around 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent in more than 400 undeveloped prospects. But most of these potential fields are small, isolated or technically complex. Developing them will require high oil and gas prices, fiscal stability, and a lot of investor confidence.
Politics vs geology
Even if a future government relaxes exploration licensing rules, geology will remain the bigger constraint. The North Sea is simply not as cheap as it was, and global fossil fuel giants have many other options. It is currently far cheaper to produce oil and gas in other regions, the Middle East or North Africa for example. Projects in these countries are all competing for the same capital.
Volatility in the energy sector will continue to make investors cautious. The 2015 oil price crash cut activity in the UK sector to its lowest level in decades, and it has never fully recovered. As fossil fuels are sold on the global market, political volatility, international and national, can lead to rapid shifts in investor confidence.
In the UK the introduction of a windfall tax in 2023 and changing requirements for environmental impact assessments are all making decision making on long-term projects riskier. And while the UK still needs considerable volumes of gas in future (and more modest amounts of oil) both are declining as our energy system evolves and renewable energy expand.
The UK’s mix of economic uncertainty, mature geology and smaller discoveries will make it harder to attract major international energy firms.
The future of the North Sea
That doesn’t mean the North Sea has finished as a source of oil and gas. For instance, undeveloped discoveries – where oil or gas has been confirmed but not yet produced – represent a lower-risk opportunity. But returns may be modest as many are relatively small and isolated from existing infrastructure.
New exploration licenses, if issued, might extend production modestly, but they are unlikely to deliver another game-changing discovery.
Some analysts argue that future licensing should be highly strategic, limited to projects with clear economic importance or climate compatibility. That approach could reduce reliance on imported gas, which tends to be more carbon-intensive than gas produced domestically. This would certainly make more sense than restarting fracking. But it would still not recreate the industry’s heyday.
Easy oil is over
The North Sea will still produce oil and gas for years to come, but its role will shrink. Even with friendlier policies, the era of big discoveries and rapid growth isn’t coming back.
Maximising extraction may sound appealing to politicians, but geology, economics and climate commitments all point to the North Sea’s best oil and gas days being behind it. The real challenge now is managing the investment during decline while investing in the cleaner solutions that will replace it.
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dust
Protesters march with an anti-fossil fuel banner during the demonstration in London on January 15, 2023. (Photo: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“The only sensible thing to do is to pivot the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out—wind,” argued one climate advocate.
As the United Kingdom on Monday faced the onset of its fourth heatwave of this summer, climate campaigners continued to call out BP for its decision to plow ahead with reopening the Murlach oil field in the North Sea, despite fossil fuels pushing up global temperatures and the U.K. government’s efforts to limit extraction in the region.
“This is climate vandalism, pure and simple,” Kate Blagojevic, Europe team lead at the group 350.org, said in a Monday statement. “BP is putting its profit margins above the survival of communities, ecosystems, and future generations. Every barrel of oil from this project pushes us closer to climate breakdown, more floods, more fires, more heatwaves.”
“The era of fossil fuels is over, and BP’s desperate attempts to wring out the last drops of oil from the North Sea are a reckless betrayal of the public and the planet. They should be winding down, not doubling down,” she declared.
Greenpeace U.K. policy director Doug Parr was similarly critical, saying in a statement that “the North Sea is on death’s door. Reserves are drying up, and what’s left and untapped is barely enough to keep it on life support.”
The Telegraph on Sunday noted recent research from the government’s North Sea Transition Authority that found there were over 3 billion barrels of oil and gas in fields already in production, 6 billion barrels in known potential developments, and 3.5 billion barrels in identified exploration zones.
According to the newspaper, BP said the Murlach field contains 20 million barrels of recoverable oil and 600 million cubic meters of gas, and is “expected to produce around 20,000 barrels of oil and 17 million cubic feet of gas per day,” due to new technologies that weren’t around when it was shut down over two decades ago.
Parr said that “3 billion barrels wouldn’t last more than a few years at current rates of consumption, and even that assumes it is economic to extract. Whatever the political rhetoric, the oil and gas is pretty much gone, and soon, so too will the jobs of thousands of workers.”
“Unless we want to remain dependent on overseas imports and watch an entire industry collapse with no plan for workers,” he added, “the only sensible thing to do is to pivot the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out—wind.”
Although the U.K’s current Labour Party leaders have pledged to avoid new licensing for fossil fuel projects in the North Sea, “BP won agreement to reopen Murlach, 120 miles east of Aberdeen, under the previous government and has since been installing equipment, with production potentially restarting next month,” The Telegraph explained.
A spokesperson for Ed Miliband, U.K. secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said Sunday that “we are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment to not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis.”
“We are delivering a fair and orderly transition in the North Sea, with the biggest ever investment in offshore wind and two first-of-a-kind carbon capture and storage clusters,” the spokesperson added.
Miliband in June announced new guidance for environmental impact assessments of proposed oil and gas projects in licensed fields, which came in response to last year’s landmark U.K. Supreme Court ruling. After that decision, Judge Andrew Stewart of Scotland’s Court of Session ruled in January that Equinor and Shell, which are respectively behind the Rosebank oil and gas field and the Jackdaw gas project, can’t move ahead with extraction.
The June guidance means offshore developers can now submit applications for extractions in fields that are already licensed, including Rosebank and Jackdaw. In response to that development earlier this year, Mel Evans, Greenpeace U.K.’s head of climate, said that “it’s only right for the government to take into account the emissions from burning oil and gas when deciding whether to approve fossil fuel projects currently pending.”
“Since Rosebank and other drilling sites will pump out a lot of carbon while providing little benefit to the economy and no help to bill payers, they should fail the criteria ministers have just set out,” Evans added. “Real energy security and future-proofed jobs for energy workers can only come through homegrown, cheap renewable energy, and that’s what ministers should focus on.”
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsDonald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
A mobile “Newton Room” classroom operating in Scotland. Credit: Scott O’Hara
Critics fear that Equinor’s latest UK education deal is aimed at quelling opposition to North Sea drilling.
This story was published in partnership with Norway’s E24.
Norwegian oil company Equinor is spending more than £200,000 to sponsor science classrooms in the Shetland Islands, as it seeks approval for plans to develop the vast Rosebank oilfield 80 miles off the coast.
Opponents of Rosebank — the largest new oil and gas field in the North Sea — have accused Equinor of using its deep pockets to dilute concerns over further drilling. Developing the project would result the release of millions of tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when the oil it pumps is burned.
Ariane Burgess, a Scottish Green Member of the Scottish Parliament, said Equinor’s backing for the classrooms was “concerning.”
“The timing and location of these investments raise questions about the motives behind them, particularly in light of Equinor’s broader strategy to secure social license to operate in sensitive areas,” said Burgess, one of seven Scottish Green law-makers in the 129-seat assembly in Edinburgh.
The pop-up classroom — known as a “Newton Room” — launched in March and aims to reach 1,000 children aged 10 to 14 across the archipelago of 20,000 people over the next two years, said Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a Scottish agency partnering on the project.
The classroom will be set up in community centres near primary and secondary schools on several of Shetland’s 16 inhabited islands, taking in the Shetland mainland, Unst, Foula, Yell and Fair Isle.
Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian state, said the project would deliver “pioneering, face-to-face” programmes to develop science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. The decision to fund the initiative had “no link” to Equinor’s plan to develop Rosebank, and it had declined an opportunity to include its corporate logo, the company said.
“We are proud to support the first Shetland mobile Newton Room and to assist its core operations in the Highlands and Islands,” said Alice Baxter, Equinor’s UK spokesperson. “We look forward to seeing how the mobile Newton Room benefits the wider Shetland community and are delighted to be a key partner in this great programme for the region.”
Credit: Sabrina Bedford
‘Brainwash Children’
Equinor spent a total of $82.7 million on sponsorships between 2020 and 2024, with science, education and research as the main focus, according to a government response to a parliamentary question submitted by Lars Haltbrekken, an MP for the Socialist Left Party, on June 16.
Haltbrekken, a long-time critic of Equinor’s 30-year history of sponsoring education in Norway, had submitted the question in response to reports in Norwegian media detailing the company’s backing for a computer game aimed at UK schoolchildren. The game, called EnergyTown, was developed in partnership with London-based marketing agency We Are Futures and the Association for Science Education, a professional teachers’ body.
Climate campaigners said the game crossed the line between education and promoting fossil fuels because it portrayed renewable energy as “less reliable.”
EnergyTown was part of a two-year-old science education initiative called Wonderverse which has reached over 80,000 schoolchildren in the UK, according to Equinor’s website. Website copy that has since been deleted described Wonderverse as designed to “build future talent pipelines and secure permission to operate at a time of sensitivity around fossil fuels, particularly in light of approval for the Rosebank development.” We Are Futures did not respond to a request for comment.
“[Equinor] is trying to brainwash children into thinking it has the solution to the climate crisis, when in reality, fossil fuels are the reason we are struggling with the climate crisis today,” Haltbrekken told DeSmog.
Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, was the founding partner of the Newton Rooms mobile classroom programme developed by the nonprofit FIRST Scandinavia in Norway in 2003.
“It’s interesting to see how Equinor has developed a playbook for influencing children in Norway and then copy-pasted it to other countries like Scotland,” said Julie Forchhammer, co-founder of Norwegian climate advocacy group Klimakultur.
In Scotland, Equinor’s current education partnerships include a deal with the Aberdeen Science Centre, a museum near the Norwegian company’s UK headquarters in Aberdeen, and another with the city’s TechFest annual science festival.
Equinor committed £208,500 for the Shetland Islands mobile classroom project as part of a total package of £385,000 to support the Science Skills Academy education initiative run by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said Morven Fancey, the agency’s head of housing, skills and population.
“Our core content and supporting educational materials for Newton Room activities were developed at the beginning of the Highland operation and are branded by [Science Skills Academy] independently of any industry involvement,” Fancey said.
Island Opinion Divided
The sponsorship deal with Highlands and Islands Enterprise was agreed in 2023, Fancey said. That was the same year that Equinor won approval for Rosebank from the UK’s former Conservative government, sparking outcry among climate campaigners.
Equinor is now seeking re-approval for Rosebank after Scotland’s highest court dealt a blow to the project in January by ruling the original decision unlawful because it had failed to consider the environmental impacts of burning the fossil fuels extracted from the oilfield.
Opening any new oil and gas fields in the North Sea is incompatible with achieving 2015 Paris Agreement goals of avoiding catastrophic climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5°C, according to a June report by academics at University College London. Burning Rosebank’s oil and gas would produce up to 200 million tonnes of CO2 over the project’s lifetime, which is more than the combined annual emissions of 28-low income countries, wrote one of the report’s authors in an article for The Conversation.
Opinion over Equinor’s role in sponsoring the classrooms is divided on the Shetland Islands, which have historically benefitted from oil and gas money.
“In Shetland, the fact that our kids have amazing leisure facilities, the roads have no potholes, and the care homes are good is all because of fossil fuels,” said Margaret Goddard, a doctor who lives on the islands of Burra, and who has daughters aged 11 and 14.
But she expressed concerns over the climate crisis, and Equinor’s motives, acknowledging, “These things are very difficult.”
Alex Armitage, a Scottish Green councillor for Shetland Islands Council said he found Equinor’s role “quite dystopian.”
“An oil company that’s making very little effort to reduce carbon emissions and is greenwashing all of its operations is seeking to show that it’s trying to help the next generation,” Armitage said. “Everything it’s doing goes against that.”
Like other oil companies, Equinor has rowed back on its climate commitments in the past year, having announced in February that it would slash planned investment in renewables and low-carbon solutions by around 50 percent between 2024 and 2027. By 2026, Equinor plans to maintain over 95 percent of its energy production from fossil fuels, according to analysis by the environmental law nonprofit ClientEarth.
Equinor holds an 80 percent stake in Rosebank in a joint venture with Ithaca Energy, which is owned by Israel’s Delek Group. In 2023, Delek Group appeared on a UN list of 97 companies whose activities in the West Bank “raised particular human rights concerns.”
‘Extensive Influence’
Oil companies view educational and cultural sponsorships as crucial tools for deflecting pressure from climate activists, influencing legislation, and portraying themselves as gatekeepers to climate solutions, according to a previous DeSmog review of internal industry documents subpoenaed by the U.S Congress as part of an investigation into oil industry disinformation that concluded last year.
Equinor was not a direct target of the investigation, which focused on the U.S. businesses of ExxonMobil , Chevron, Shell USA Inc. and BP America. The Norwegian company is, however, a member of the American Petroleum Institute lobby group, which described sponsored community groups as among the “best and most influential voices with targeted policymakers on industry issues,” according to a subpoenaed document from October 2017.
The findings built on previous research showing how the fossil fuel industry has spent nearly a century using educational sponsorships to shape public opinion about energy and the environment. As early as 1928, Standard Oil of California (which became Chevron) was sponsoring educational radio broadcasts that reached millions of American students over decades. Recent programmes include BP’s Science Explorers, a series of free online resources that now reaches over half of UK secondary schools.
In the latest sign of the oil and gas industry seeking to influence young people, DeSmog reported on June 30 that a group of six Canadian fossil fuel companies known as Pathways Alliance had been sponsoring science fairs for children. The finding followed a report issued by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment earlier this year that documented the sector’s “extensive influence on climate education for elementary and secondary school students.”
‘Cynical Tactic’
Equinor has been a sponsor of the Aberdeen Science Centre since 2019, funding the facility and supporting its partnership with Norway’s Vitenfabrikken (The Science Factory), a children’s science museum in the city of Bergen. The two institutions are linked via an initiative called the North Sea Collaboration Project, which develops science and technology activities aimed at children, focused on “carbon emissions reduction solutions” and climate awareness, according to the Aberdeen Science Centre’s website.
Aberdeen Science Centre did not respond to a request for comment.
The TechFest event, which Equinor sponsors alongside BP and Shell, includes Equinor branding in its 2025 programme directory next to listings for workshops aimed at children as young as four. TechFest did not respond to a request for comment.
Through its Hywind floating wind project, Equinor provided £60,000 to transform a disused classroom at Peterhead Academy into what the school called an “ultra-modern” renewables space, complete with screens, break-out areas and turbine models, which opened in 2018, according to trade publication Energy Voice.
Peterhead is also the site of a planned Equinor carbon capture and storage project, which is facing questions over its likely economic viability and climate impact. DeSmog revealed in June that UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves had told Equinor last year that the industry would receive a “quid pro quo” in return for higher taxes on its windfall profits in the form of carbon capture subsidies.
Such programmes reflect a broader oil industry strategy to preserve its reputation among future generations, said Klimakultur’s Forchhammer. “It’s a cynical tactic, but they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t working.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Shailer, Shetland Times
