I’m a Tory MP, but I can’t let ministers trash our net zero pledge with the Rosebank oilfield

theguardian.com:

A s the chair of Mission Zero, the independent review of net zero for the government, I have met countless champions of innovation, and witnessed ingenuity and unwavering ambition to drive forward net zero in the UK.

The imperative to reduce carbon across the economy has never been stronger. It is therefore concerning that, at a time when the UK should be embracing a renewable future, an application has been submitted by the Norwegian state-owned oil company Equinor to open the UK’s largest undeveloped oilfield – Rosebank, in the North Sea.

The evidence is clear that developing new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5C. When the UK government held the presidency of Cop26, we commissioned the International Energy Agency (IEA) to develop a roadmap to net zero by 2050. In this groundbreaking report, the IEA concluded that no further oil and gas projects would be approved, a conclusion echoed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The UK climate change committee has also suggested that an end to exploration of oil and gas would strengthen the country’s diplomatic role, and send a clear signal to investors and consumers that it is committed to reaching its international climate targets.

This month, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, called out companies and governments planning to build new, large-scale fossil-fuel projects, suggesting that by doing so they were betting on the failure of the world reaching its climate goals.

Rosebank alone has the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil – that’s enough to produce the equivalent emissions of running 56 coal-fired power plants for a year. Analysis shows that just this single new oilfield would be enough to exceed the UK’s carbon