Climate Tensions Are Tearing The UK Government Apart
Climate Tensions Are Tearing The UK Government Apart
Ideology over science will only lead to destruction.
Remember a while back when the UK government said it would open up 100 new oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea despite this going against climate science, its own climate goals and its own policies? Well, it turns out there are still some within the Tory Party with at least one functioning brain cell and a moral compass, as it has triggered a rebellion. Chris Skidmore, a Tory MP and former Interim Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, has said he will resign over this “tragedy” of a bill as he can “no longer condone nor continue to support a government that is committed to a course of action that I know is wrong and will cause future harm.” To further hammer home his morals, he said, “To fail to act, rather than merely speak out, is to tolerate a status quo that cannot be sustained.” But why is this bill so moronic? What is the backlash? And do we have a genuinely viable alternative to digging up yet more dino-juice?
To understand what’s going on here, you need to understand the extraordinary claims the UK government are making about this bill, and why they are so demonstrably false.
Let’s start with the main man himself, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has said his fossil fuel policy will lower energy bills by increasing the UK supply. The UK is still feeling the cost of living crisis kicked off by Putin and his deranged predecessor, Liz Truss, and lowering energy bills would be a vast help to UK residents. But Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), has pointed out that “we export the vast majority of [the oil] to be refined and then import back at market prices — so it doesn’t help to lower bills.” So, no lower bills, sadly.
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Sunak and his cabinet members, particularly Jeremy Hunt, have said this policy will increase the UK’s energy security. The idea is that domestic fuel production is less influenced by global markets, meaning we are better shielded from negative market shifts like what Putin caused in 2022. However, the companies that extract North Sea oil are privately owned multinational corporations. As such, they sell on the global market, not the UK domestic market, mainly if the global market is more profitable (i.e. expensive). A study by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) actually found that only 1% of the oil extracted by these new oil licences would be used by the UK by 2030. So, these licences will have zero impact on the UK’s energy security. They would if the UK had a nationalised energy firm, keeping the industry within our borders, but it was all privatised by Thatcher and Major in 1990.
Sunak’s supporters, in particular, Hunt and Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Claire Coutinho, have repeatedly said that the government’s independent climate advisory board, the CCC, has allowed for more oil and gas extraction in its recommendations, stating that oil and gas will still make up a quarter of UK energy by 2050. This is demonstrably false. A spokesperson for the CCC destroyed the claim that “quarter of UK energy by 2050”, saying that “they used their own calculation to get to that.” As such, the CCC does not endorse the 25% figure. This is not a surprise as climate studies have repeatedly shown that by 2050, fossil fuels should only make up 5% of our energy mix to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
To make matters worse for Sunak, The chair of the CCC, Piers Forster, said in response to Sunak, Hunt & Coutinho’s claims, “Our earlier advice is still current. UK oil and gas consumption needs to fall by over 80% to meet UK targets. This and COP decision [the agreement at the end of COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels] makes further licensing inconsistent with climate goals.”
But the Tories have actually doubled down on their false climate claims! Sunak and Hunt have claimed that domestically produced oil and gas are better for the environment as it is “far better to have it here at home rather than shipping it here from halfway around the world with two, three, four times the amount of carbon emissions versus the oil and gas we have here at home.” This ignores that the North Sea oil must be exported to be refined and then imported again. These figures also seem to have come from the oil industry, not an independent review. Channel 4 found that these figures were specifically about gas, not gas and oil, and they didn’t actually include the emissions from burning said gas! In reality, they found that imported gas has a carbon footprint that is only 17% higher than domestic gas. Even then, the UK’s reliance on natural gas is set to reduce in coming years as hydrogen gas (which can have zero emissions) is being trialled as a replacement. So no, domestically produced oil and gas won’t save vast amounts of emissions.
My favourite claim by the government is that these new oil and gas licences will bolster the economy by providing more jobs. Which is just utterly false. Renewable infrastructure is now cheaper than many fossil fuel equivalents, meaning you get way more bang for your buck! In fact, it is now economical to shut down some mid-life-cycle fossil fuel energy infrastructure and build brand-new renewables to replace them. Moreover, renewables have been shown to create more jobs than fossil fuels, as the vast majority of the jobs they create are local, not in shipping or in a foreign country. What’s more, these jobs are also higher paying and higher quality (i.e. safer) than those in the fossil fuel industry. This stance is backed by the IEA, which found that every pound invested in renewables creates three times more jobs than each pound invested in fossil fuels. It’s not just the job market and the economy that will be worse off either; investors will too. A recent study found that over the past ten years, the return on investments in renewables has been 367% higher than investments in fossil fuels!
In other words, the entire UK, rich or poor, will be worse off for prioritising these oil and gas licences over renewables, and the government is talking out of its arse here.
Now, the Tories have spent the past few years indulging in inward-focused incestuous ideology politics, hence Brexit, Johnson and Truss, but there are still those within the party who recognise this for what it is. An unfathomably deceitful, blind bill that goes against science, public interest and morals, and instead, its only purpose is to please the small fraction of extreme conservatives, win over oil-rich funders of the party, and line the pockets of party members who are paid millions by the oil industry to push their interests. This is no way to lead a country. As such, former energy secretary Alok Sharma is among an unspecified group of Conservative rebels refusing to vote for Sunak’s moronic bill.
Voting on this bill has yet to take place, but when it does, the divide in the Tory party will become apparent to us for the first time. Skidmore and Sharma are the tip of a disenchanted Tory MP iceberg. The lack of cohesion in the party is palpable, hence the leadership musical chairs we have seen over the past few years. So, even if this rebellion is smaller than expected, it could stir up the waters and sink Sunak’s boat.
But is there a viable alternative to oil and gas? After all, the alternatives all have their weaknesses. Wind and solar aren’t on-tap or reliable, and the giant batteries needed to make up for this are insanely expensive. So, can an energy grid really run off them properly without bankrupting us? We could use nuclear power, which has the same or lower emissions as renewables. But it has the same problem as renewables, as it is our most expensive form of energy. To make matters worse, Russia has an iron grip on the nuclear fuel industry, meaning nuclear is far from a secure energy source.
Well, research has found that our current technology and renewables industry is capable of proving over 90% of our energy demands without costs becoming unviable. To close that last 10% would require exponentially more grid batteries, solar panels and wind turbines, so it isn’t feasible to reach 100% just yet. But we can fill that 10% with other low-carbon energy, such as nuclear. I mean, nuclear power already supplies the UK with 15% of its energy.
In other words, with our current technology, the UK could have a 90/10 split energy grid between renewables and nuclear, that would be as reliable as our current one, produce energy at about the same price (if not cheaper), whilst also eliminating our dependence on importing fossil fuels and reducing our dependence on Russian nuclear fuel. And, as a bonus, it would have the lowest carbon emissions possible! This is within our reach. But it won’t happen if the government continues to hand out oil and gas licences and drive energy investment and subsidies elsewhere.
Sadly, I can’t see this changing under Sunak. His government is peddling its own ideology over science and in the process, heavily lining the pockets of its oil-friendly party members and the massive multinational oil conglomerates who pay them. But this isn’t sustainable, not in a democracy or the current era of global politics. As such, Sunak and his spineless henchmen are eroding not only his own party but also the UK’s position in global politics. Let’s just hope his little house of cards falls before the damage is irreparable.
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Sources: The Guardian, The Guardian, The Energyst, BBC, The Independent, Planet Earth & Beyond, BGEN, NREL, UK Gov