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The campaign groups Greenpeace and Uplift launched a legal challenge against Government plans to develop the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea.
The development is at odds with guidance from the Climate Change Committee, which has cautioned against the development of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea as inconsistent with the country’s net zero targets.
The COP28 conference ended with a call for a transition away from fossil fuels – although stopped short of calling for a phase out (or even phase down) of oil and gas. In the space between global net zero goals, and the continuing need for fossil fuels in the short term, politicians and campaigners are shaping the pace and ambition of the shift away from oil and gas. Find out what the UK public thinks about transitioning away from fossil fuels here.
In a reversal of the government’s decision to grant planning permission for a new coal mine near Whitehaven in Cumbria, the High Court ruled that the greenhouse gas emissions of the coal to be burned at the mine had not been taken into account when the decision had been made.
Instead, and echoing the claims of ‘net zero’ airports which don’t include the emissions from flights, consideration had only been given to the emissions released in building and operating the facility.
The High court decision came during the same month that the last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations was closed.
Polling in the weeks leading up the 2024 General Election by the consultancy True North was reported as showing 75% of people supporting North Sea oil & gas – this is a much higher number than would be expected from wider polling. But the wording of the questions asked people to choose between imported oil and domestic oil (not oil vs renewable energy, which is consistently preferred as the best way to reduce the country’s reliance on importing foreign oil and gas).
Polling by Uplift, carried out at a similar time, found that North Sea oil and gas companies are widely considered by most respondents (70%) to benefit more from extraction in the basin than Scotland itself does currently.
Uplift found that SNP voters were the most concerned about climate change, and that 45% of SNP voters thought the UK Government should stop issuing new oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea, compared with 31% in favour of new licensing.
Previous research with SNP voters also found higher support than opposition for ending licenses to drill in the North sea, and at a British level there’s much more support for renewables than oil and gas. But there isn’t yet a clear majority in favour of ending oil and gas exploration altogether – in Scotland or in Britain.