THE UK government will today face a legal challenge over "reckless" plans to award more than 100 new licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration in a court bid to stop proposed fossil fuel production.
Campaign group Greenpeace will go to the High Court to halt the sanctioning of a new licensing round and block the further exploration.
They have already written to UK ministers explaining the grounds on which they consider the latest offshore oil and gas licensing round to be unlawful.
They call for the decision to award the new licences to be reversed, arguing that new oil and gas exploration and development is incompatible with the UK’s own rules and international climate obligations.
Three weeks ago the United Nations secretary general António Guterres’ in warning of the climate emergency said that climate activists are sometimes depicted as "dangerous radicals". But he said the "truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels".
It came as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, delivered a "final warning" on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions take the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.
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Researchers at UCL believe that the additional greenhouse gas emissions from developing new oil and gas fields, as existing wells are depleted, would bust the UK’s carbon budgets and set the world on course to exceed the limit of 1.5C targeted at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021.
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Last year, in a report commissioned by the UK for Cop26, the International Energy Agency advised that no new fossil fuel exploration and development should take place from this year if the world was to stay within 1.5C.
The new judicial review is separate to a legal challenge over claims there was a failure to check the environmental impact of burning gas from the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea off the coast of Aberdeen.
The government gave its approval for Shell to develop the field for gas extraction in 2022.
Greenpeace say that despite the "stark warnings" current approved North Sea projects are already enough to exceed the 1.5C limit.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which threw energy markets into turmoil, the British government has become more enthusiastic about issuing new North Sea oil licences in order to maintain energy security by boosting domestic supply.
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“Unless you can explain how we can transition (to net zero) without oil and gas, we need oil and gas,” said energy secretary Grant Shapps at the end of March.
Greenpeace is challenging the Government on the basis that it has "botched" the decision making process, in the first days of the Liz Truss administration, and failed to properly assess the climate impact of the new oil and gas licensing round.
The campaign group say none of the Government’s tests look at emissions created from burning fossil fuels, despite the fact that this will amount to more than 80% of the total emissions generated from the new licences.
There are also concerns the UK Government will imminently approve the permit for the vast Rosebank oilfield, west of Shetland, said to be the biggest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea.
The first phase of the project alone would seek to extract 324 million barrels of oil equivalent of oil and gas, making it double the size of the controversial Cambo oil field, west of Shetland.
Cambo became the focus of environmental protests at the UN's COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow.
Greenpeace argues that by prioritising renewables, upgrading the grid, and stopping energy waste from our homes the nation can achieve energy security, rather than by investing in new oil and gas, which belongs to the companies extracting it who will sell it at the prevailing price on the international market.
Philip Evans, Greenpeace UK’s climate campaigner, said: “We’ve had warning after warning that there must be no new oil, and now time is running out. Yet the Government continues to ignore the experts, approving new oil and gas without even bothering to check the full climate impact. That’s why we’re challenging them in the High Court today. If energy secretary Grant Shapps disagrees with the IPCC assessment, the IEA, and warnings from the UN chief we’d love to hear his rationale.
“Relying on fossil fuels is disastrous for our energy security, the cost of living, and the climate. So why is the Government hell bent on approving new licences? It begs the question of whose interests they really serve.
“The Government must instead properly tax fossil fuel companies and use the money to upgrade our old fashioned electricity grid, invest in cheap home grown renewables and lift planning blocks that hold them back, and invest in stopping energy waste from our homes. This is the only way we can tackle the scandal of the cost of living, guarantee our energy security, and help the climate.”
The UK Government was approached for comment.
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