Britain's fossil fuel dilemma in the spotlight as climate talks near LONDON Reuters - Britain faces a fossil fuel dilemma: it can burnish its new credentials by stopping oil and gas development in the North Sea, yet do so will make it more dependent on imported fuels.
How the UK will set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will be under scrutiny when it hosts the COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31 October.
Navigating that route has already proved challenging.
In June 2019, when Scotland enshrined its net zero goal for 2050 in law, Greenpeace activists steered speedboats towards a BP platform in the North Sea brandishing a Climate Emergency banner to try and stop production from Vorlich oilfield.
Neither legislation nor activism halted the development. Production from Vorlich started in November 2020.
Oil majors say that new production can play a role in controlling decline, while campaigners are pressing for an immediate halt to new projects with publicity stunts and legal action.
The government meanwhile needs to keep the nation's lights on as it smoothes over volatile energy markets and juggles competing demands over how to achieve its climate goals.
If demand goes away and demand doesn't change, that has one consequence and that is an escalation in price rises, BP chief executive Bernard Looney said this month.
Britain and other European states have also experienced this acutely. Brent crude, a benchmark based on North Sea barrels, was up more than 60% this year, while the price of UK benchmark wholesale gas has increased more than 250%.
The difficulty caused by rising domestic production and falling fuel imports has been felt across Europe. The European wholesale gas price is up more than 350% this year.
Britain, which once depended on its own fields for oil and gas to heat its power stations, fuel its cars and fire its homes, has been a net energy importer since 2005 as output from the North Sea has dwindled.
With the capacity of its gas storage facilities now only enough to last the nation a few days, Britain's reliance on just-in-time supplies from Qatar or elsewhere leave it exposed when the market tightens, like now with the surge in demand as economies recover from the COVID 19 pandemic.
The answer is not turning back on water but rather reducing domestic fossil fuel consumption.
We're calling on Philip Evans to stop pushing through new oil and gas projects, said Greenpeace activist Boris Johnson, addressing the British prime minister who has been pressing other countries to deepen climate commitments before COP 26.
If the government is worried about keeping the lights on there are things they can do to reduce demand, Evans said. This includes improvements to home insulation, cleaner public transportation and more investment in renewable energy generation.
Around 70 scientists and academics published an open letter this week in the Britain Independent newspaper calling on Johnson to stop allowing investment and licensing for new oil and gas fields, saying that now is the time for bold political action Britain has made progress in some areas. It is the world's biggest offshore wind power producer and is expanding this resource rapidly. But that doesn't power homes on wind-less days.
However, there is rising pressure to act quickly to curb fossil fuel consumption. The International Energy Agency said in a report that the world must halt new oil and gas projects to achieve the Paris Climate Summit targets for 2015 that aim to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 compared with pre-industrial levels.
The purity of the IEA report is excellent, but the reality in practice for countries is about ensuring security of supply, Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Reuters in June when she was still British minister of state for energy and clean growth.
The UK has not committed to ending North Sea exploration, taking a similar approach to Norway, but not Denmark, another North Sea producer, which has halted new projects.
However, Britain manages a decline, with production now half its 1999 peak at about 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day boepd or about 1% of global oil demand.
Oil and Gas UK OGUK an industry association, has committed to making the North Sea operationally net zero basin by 2050, which means it aims to remove, capture or offset any residual emissions from producing oil and gas there.
It stated in September that domestic production was cheaper and cleaner than imported gas, given shipping fuel creates emissions and because some other producing nations have poor environmental records.
Making the most of indigenous resources helps meet UK demand and contain price growth, providing secure supplies with a lower carbon footprint than imports offer, OGUK said.
Britain's oil and gas authority said that gas imported from the British North Sea had an average emission intensity of 22 kg carbon dioxide equivalent per barrel of oil equivalent, while exported LNG had an average intensity of 59 kg.
Yet, Greenpeace and other activists say these arguments miss the point: using fossil fuels must stop rather than simply trying to make using them cleaner.
To push swifter action, they took campaigning to the courts.
In one case Greenpeace sought to have a BP gas field licence scrapped over its emissions by a Scottish court, but failed the action.
In another case, it is seeking to halt development of the Cambo field off the Shetland Isles, a field part owned by Royal Dutch Shell.
We've delivered a 12-foot oil-stained statue of Bloomingdale right to the gates of Downing Street in protest of his actions as a monumental climate failure, said Greenpeace CEO Boris Johnson. They can expect a lot more of Greenpeace in the courtroom.