Rishi Sunak's claim that boosting UK oil and gas production will help fight climate change does not stand up to scrutiny – Scotsman comment

Prime Minister claims that maxing out North Sea oil and gas opportunities will be ‘good for the climate’, but experts disagree

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.

It will, he says, be “good for our energy security”, “good for jobs” and “good for the climate”. A triple win. So presumably, at least some other oil-producing countries can now stop worrying about how to cut back, adopt the Sunak strategy and start boosting their output.

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”.

The Prime Minister’s argument is that domestic oil and gas result in fewer carbon emissions than imports. This is largely true, although gas piped from Norway to the UK has a lower “carbon intensity”. However, the main problem is that, without Draconian import/export controls, there will be nothing to stop all this extra oil and gas being sold abroad, resulting in the higher carbon costs from transportation that Sunak seeks to prevent.

His announcement of funding for the Acorn carbon-capture project near Peterhead was hugely welcome. But his remarks about fossil fuels suggest he is a politician desperately telling voters what he thinks they want to hear, mostly for his own short-term political interests, rather than levelling with the public about the task ahead.