Fears that UK’s net zero strategy will be blown off course by oil and gas pressures
It was supposed to be called “Green Day” – a big presentation of the national strategy for reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But it has been rebranded, apparently.
The event, taking place in Aberdeen on 30 March, will no longer share a name with the California pop-punk band; ministers are understood to have plumped for the less lyrical “energy security day”. But climate campaigners fear it looks set to be, to quote Green Day’s 2004 hit, a Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Energy secretary Grant Shapps and chancellor Jeremy Hunt have come under pressure from industry to produce a meaningful response to US president Joe Biden’s $369bn in climate subsidies, granted through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has seen major companies reallocate investment to the US. The pair will also be hoping to seize the initiative from Labour, which has made the switch to green energy a key battleground.
Shapps and his newly formed Department for Energy and Net Zero certainly have a mandate to shake up a crucial industry. As the energy crisis has escalated over the past 18 months, it has exposed flaws across the sector – from tariffs and decarbonisation concerns to the link between wholesale gas and electricity prices.
But the Guardian has revealed that the presentation will contain measures to please the fossil fuel industry, from new offshore drilling plans to a refusal to force oil and gas companies to stop flaring by 2025 – as recommended by Chris Skidmore in his net zero review. It may even give a licence to the huge, and so far undeveloped, Rosebank oil and gas field off Shetland.
It is understood that Ofgem will not, as had been mooted, be given powers to include the net zero target in its regulation of the energy sector, and
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