A gaggle of MPs has condemned the federal government’s plan to maximise oil and fuel manufacturing within the North Sea as “political theatre”, warning it contradicts agreements made on the worldwide stage.
At the weekend, 30 cross-party MPs and friends wrote to the vitality safety secretary, asking her “in the strongest possible terms to withdraw” the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which is to be debated within the commons later.
Sir Alok Sharma, the previous cupboard minister who ran the COP26 local weather summit in Glasgow in 2021, didn’t signal the letter, however immediately additionally criticised the invoice.
Speaking on the Today programme, he known as it a “smoke and mirrors” train that reinforces the notion that the UK is “rowing back from climate action”.
Caroline Lucas MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change (Climate APPG), which organised the letter, stated the invoice would “do nothing to deliver energy security, or reduce household bills, but will threaten the delivery of our climate and nature targets”.
According to authorities figures, 80% of oil extracted within the UK is exported.
The invoice would require the trade regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), to run annual licencing rounds for brand spanking new oil and fuel initiatives.
The authorities says this is able to improve investor confidence and make the UK extra energy-independent, in addition to producing funds for public companies or the swap to cleaner vitality.
But the NSTA in September stated the invoice was “not necessary”.
It already has the ability to subject licences as typically because it likes – and there have been annual licensing rounds for many of the previous decade.
The letter immediately known as the invoice – introduced final yr as the federal government re-set its local weather stance – a bit of “political theatre”.
The signatories stated the federal government ought to as a substitute be “increasing the supply of low-cost renewables and implementing energy efficiency measures, both of which would genuinely lower consumer bills and have strong public support”.
“New oil and gas licensing rounds will have very little impact on the UK’s energy supply and security, primarily because most of the UK’s gas has already been burned,” it stated.
Offshore invoice ‘diametrically opposed’ to COP28 pledge
The letter is signed largely by MPs from the Labour get together, which has pledged to cease granting new oil and fuel initiatives.
Former Conservative surroundings Minister Zac Goldsmith, deputy chief of the Liberal Democrats, Daisy Cooper MP, and former authorities web zero tsar, Chris Skidmore MP additionally added their names to the listing.
Chris Skidmore introduced on Friday he would resign early over the invoice, saying: “I can no longer stand by. The climate crisis that we face is too important to politicise or to ignore.”
In December, as the UK rounded out its second-warmest yr on file, the UK signed a pledge on the COP28 local weather summit to “transition away” from fossil fuels.
“But this bill, and the government’s commitment to “max out” the North Sea’s declining oil and gas reserves, is
diametrically opposed to that agreement,” the letter added.
The authorities’s local weather advisors, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) stated in June that though the UK “will need some oil and gas” till it reaches its web zero emissions goal, “this does not in itself justify the development of new North Sea fields”.
A division for vitality safety and web zero (DESNZ) spokesperson stated the UK will “still need oil and gas for decades to come, even when we reach net zero in 2050”.
They added: “It makes sense to make the most of our domestic supply, rather than shipping in liquefied natural gas with four times the emissions than domestically produced gas.”
“These new licenses will not increase carbon emissions above our legally binding carbon budgets, but will provide certainty for industry, support 200,000 jobs and bring in tens of billions of tax that we can invest in the green transition and support people with cost of living. “
Source: information.sky.com”