No New Oil and gas for a Liveable Future
Back in December 2023 Greenpeace and Uplift launched two separate legal challenges to UK government plans to open Rosebank, a massive new oilfield in the North Sea. Greenpeace and the campaign group Uplift argued that the decision to press ahead with the Rosebank development – the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield – was incompatible with the UK’s legally binding climate commitments, and say ministers’ original analysis ignored the devastating impact of burning oil from the site. Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, said at the time: “If Rosebank goes ahead, the UK will blow its own plans to stay within safe climate limits. It’s that simple. If the government disagrees, it needs to provide evidence and prove it in court.”
Today they (and we) won. Greenpeace said: “The UK government WILL NOT defend the legal cases against the Rosebank and Jackdaw oilfields! This is amazing news and a BIG WIN for the climate. The government must now properly support affected workers and prioritise investment in green jobs.”
Tessa Kahn, founder of Uplift:
“The UK gov’t has rightly recognised that approving the Rosebank oil field without taking into account the full extent of its climate impacts was unlawful. It has conceded that argument in our & Greenpeace’s legal challenge against the field. So what does that mean?”
“First, it means the govt accepts that the Supreme Court ruling in Sarah Finch’s case against an oil field in Surrey also applies to offshore fields. In Finch, the Court held that the GHG emissions from burning oil & gas must be considered in the environmental assessment…and not just the emissions from extracting that oil/gas. To put it mildly, this is common sense and it is astonishing that the biggest environmental impact of oil & gas projects had been overlooked by decision-makers until the Supreme Court weighed in.”
“The immediate consequence of the UK govt conceding this argument in the Rosebank legal challenge is that the Scottish Court of Session is very likely to quash the decision approving Rosebank, although we’re likely to have to wait a while before that’s confirmed.”
“To be clear, this is not the same as the government revoking a licence. It’s the outcome of a legal process, triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision in Finch, that has confirmed that the original decision to award the development consent for Rosebank was unlawful.
“If Equinor & Ithaca Energy decide they still want to press ahead with developing the field, then the next step will be for them to submit a new environmental statement to the govt & regulator (the NSTA) that includes the scope 3 emissions from the field.”
“If you need reminding, those emissions are massive: the same as 56 coal-fired power plants running for a year or the annual emissions of the world’s 28 poorest countries. Wondering how we square that with a safe climate?”
“Any serious engagement with carbon budgets for staying within 1.5C puts it beyond doubt that there is no room for any new oil and gas projects. This conclusion is rigorously established in a recent paper in Science, among others: No new fossil fuel projects: The norm we need | Science.”
The UK Govt issued a statement saying:
This is now a winnable battle.
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While it is positive that this may reduce the future supply of oil and gas, the country (I mean UK here) still guzzles fossil fuel and will just bring it in from abroad. What is needed is radical action to reduce the demand for the filthy stuff. It’s crazy that UK gas prices are so low compared to electricity, if levies were equalised there would be a massive switch to heat pumps without any subsidy required. But this doesn’t happen because the voters in middle England (and Scotland) would scream blue murder.
There also needs to be an effective carbon pricing system globally so that the Chinese et al are unable to sell their stuff abroad if it is produced from coal plant (they are currently indulging in a massive coal fired power station spree)
Will they now concede the JSO protesters were right and wrongly jailed?
If we want reasons for reviewing the factors which are criteria for imprisonment, then the jailing of the JSO protestors is one such. While the protestors intended to cause significant disruption to draw attention to their concern, they did not present a physical danger to other people. Personally, I have reservations about disruptive actions, but, I accept that in some cases they raise awareness in a significant way. However, I accept the sincerity of their beliefs. I think that there are other non-custodial sentences that could have been handed down, which entailed some restrictions on their movements, which still permitted them to undertake their employment an/or family responsibilities. They could also have had to undertake some community payback activities.
However, the length of imprisonment – 5 years- was grossly punitive compared to sentences of those involved in the recent riots in England.
I hope the appointment of James Timpson has a significant effect in this regard.
The recent riot sentences were effectively plea bargains though, rushed through as an urgent deterrent. Later defendants might be sentenced differently.
This is certainly a victory for the campaigners on the narrow issue. However, it has no significance globally. Empirically, there has been no energy transition and there are very few signs of one on the horizon. The small fall in the share of primary energy produced by fossil fuels is dwarfed by the absolute quantities which have expanded hugely over recent decades.
Given limited resources, a prudential approach would be to shift towards adaptation in relation to climate and biodiversity. Moral outrage will achieve little as it’s a big world out there and they aren’t going to be lectured to by Europeans.
A lot of the current spending on renewables for example looks sub-optimal and the rhetoric about a Scottish green transition is mostly hot air. Reason being that oil and gas was abundant in Scotland far beyond what could be consumed here. Even today Scotland is still producing 3 times as much oil and gas as it consumes- it was perhaps 4 times that at the peak.
Is Scotland going to export 12 times what it can produce in electricity? What would that look like? Will that be noticed in Nigeria, India, Indonesia etc?
The energy transition will take many more decades- the impacts of modern life will likely have come home to roost long before it completes.
Let’s hope it doesn’t fail on a technicality, because of imprecise terminology, regarding its location.
The Rosebank field is about 80km west of Shetland, in the North Atlantic; not in the North Sea.