The UK plans to difficulty at the least 100 new oil and fuel licences within the North Sea in a bid to maximise home extraction of fossil fuels.
This was already deliberate to occur later this 12 months underneath a licensing spherical introduced in October 2022 by the North Sea Transition Authority, however obtained recent backing on 31 July from prime minister Rishi Sunak throughout a go to to a fuel plant in Aberdeenshire. “This is about strengthening our energy security for the whole of the United Kingdom,” he instructed the BBC.
The transfer has sparked alarm amongst local weather scientists and fury from activists, who level to warnings from the International Energy Agency, amongst others, that new oil and fuel growth is incompatible with international objectives to realize net-zero emissions by 2050.
But how a lot injury may the UK authorities’s pro-fossil gasoline stance truly wreak?
In carbon phrases, the impression is prone to be comparatively small. While 100 new licences may look like lots, a lot of these received’t end in new manufacturing, factors out Mike Tholen of trade physique Offshore Energies UK. “It’s like you are off the starter blocks,” he says. “But not all of those 100 licences… will actually proceed to full development of a new field. A lot die on the way.”
In truth, even with new developments, the UK’s oil and fuel trade will stay in a state of managed decline. Industry projections, printed in February, present oil manufacturing dropping from round 40 million tonnes of oil equal in 2023 to lower than 10 million tonnes by 2050, whereas fuel manufacturing is about to fall from greater than 35 million tonnes of oil equal to round 2 million tonnes in 2050. Both trajectories embrace growth from future discoveries.
For the UK’s oil and fuel trade, “this is generally about making the most of what we have got as we gently fade off the scene”, says Tholen.
The UK is already a web importer of oil and fuel, and that’s unlikely to alter even with a renewed push for North Sea growth, says Adam Bell, a former head of vitality technique for the UK authorities’s vitality division who’s now on the consultancy Stonehaven.
“My take on this is that new licences don’t really make any difference when the North Sea is running out anyway,” he says. “They [the oil and gas industry] are not going to magically find a new field that makes up for the vast collapse in output the field has seen over the last two decades.”
But the federal government’s renewed enthusiasm for oil and fuel sends a worrying sign internationally, says Bell. With carbon seize and storage nonetheless in its infancy – regardless of news this week that two pilot initiatives in Scotland and the Humber are heading in the right direction to be developed by 2030 – pushing ahead with new oil and fuel is a “challenge to our international credibility” on local weather issues, he says.
Climate campaigners are exasperated. They level out the UK is in an excellent place to be among the many first nations on the planet to show their again on oil and fuel, given the North Sea’s pure decline in reserves, its worldwide standing as a small-scale producer and its political affect on local weather issues. Clinging to continued, dwindling manufacturing as an alternative of seizing the possibility to set a world-leading phase-down agenda is the other of true local weather management, they argue.
In isolation, maybe the news of latest oil and fuel licences might be ignored. But set along with news that the UK is winding again plans to make rental properties extra vitality environment friendly, wavering on a promise to ban the sale of latest petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030 and prone to miss its pledge to offer £11.6 billion in local weather help, there’s a normal sense the UK goes comfortable on local weather points, says Tessa Khan of UK NGO Uplift, which campaigns towards new oil and fuel growth.
Ultimately, that may water down the UK’s affect in key worldwide boards, together with the COP28 summit in Dubai later this 12 months.
“The UK is going to have a really hard time maintaining that it has any claim to leadership in terms of climate internationally, if it keeps up these kinds of policy announcements,” says Khan.
Topics:
- local weather change/
- fossil fuels
Source: www.newscientist.com