While the UK is only marginally involved in the war in the Middle East in military terms, the ramifications for this country are still potentially huge. And nowhere more so than in the energy sector. It isn’t a surprise, then, that commentary has focused on the impact potential policy interventions might have on the cost of energy to UK homes and businesses, and on whether the decisions the government takes will make the nation more – or less – energy-secure.
The usual suspects in Reform and the Tory party have used the war as an excuse to renew demands that the North Sea be sucked dry of its remaining oil and gas, in order – they say – to end reliance on fossil fuel imports and to guarantee energy security. More sensible heads have argued that the North Sea basin is a field that is way past peak production, and that has only limited amounts of oil and gas left, and that energy security can only be reached if we move further and faster on renewables. Extraordinarily, the real reason no further significant exploitation of North Sea oil and gas is planned seems to have been entirely forgotten, or at least set aside.
Fossil fuels are not being shut down in favour of renewables on a whim, or even to protect the country from the sort of shocks foreign wars bring, but because we are at the height of a climate emergency that demands every country slash its greenhouse gas discharges. The UK is already struggling to meet a 2030 emissions reduction target of 68% compared with 1990 levels, and is off track to achieve net zero emissions in 2050. Any renaissance of homegrown fossil fuel usage would blow a hole through these already shaky ambitions.
Just because all eyes are turned to the Gulf doesn’t mean the climate breakdown has gone away. Far from it. The reality is that our predicament is getting worse, almost by the day. The first three months of the year have seen record-breaking heat across much of the US, which would have been all but impossible in the absence of global heating. Meanwhile, floods have devastated Hawaii, northern Australia, and the Gulf states of Oman and the UAE. In England and Wales, February this year was the warmest on record, following on from record winter rainfall in many parts.
The long and the short of it is that we are at a critical point in the climate emergency, and cannot afford to be distracted by ill-informed calls for more domestic oil and gas. We are on course to smash through the 1.5C dangerous climate change guardrail within the next three years. This coincides with the best estimate temperature at which key climate tipping points will be crossed, most notably the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which would ultimately mean a 10-metre sea-level rise.
While we continue to dither about the rights and wrongs of reopening the North Sea to further drilling, global heating shows no such tendency. The worst possible news was revealed in a Nature paper published just a week after the bombing of Iran started, which is that the rate of global heating has been supercharged since 2015, and is now almost double what it was in the 1970s. The current rate – of close to 0.35C a decade – means that without drastic action on emissions, we will see the 2C limit shattered as soon as the late 2030s, and no end in sight.
Even as the heat builds, fossil fuels continue to dominate energy production. Here in the UK, gas was still responsible for almost one-third of UK electricity generation in 2025, and – despite the rise of EVs, most vehicles still burn petrol or diesel. Globally, in 2024, fossil fuels provided 59% of electricity supply, and fuelled nearly all transport. We need these numbers to go down, not up – and quickly.
Doubling down on the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas now would make these numbers even bigger, and would send entirely the wrong message to the rest of the world. War tends to telescope our attention towards only the conflict and its immediate consequences. Those are important, but we can’t lose sight of the bigger picture. When the pressure is growing to row back on green policies and turn away from serious climate action, it is vital that the government holds its nerve and leaves North Sea oil and gas in the ground.
Source: Read Full Article
