\n<\/p>\n
One of Britain\u2019s leading green industrialists has called on the government to offer subsidies to North Sea oil companies to help support a \u201cjust transition\u201d to renewables.<\/p>\n
Dale Vince, a Labour donor, urged ministers to \u201coptimise\u201d the remaining resources of the declining oil basin as the UK reduces its reliance on fossil fuels. The party has promised to ban new North Sea oil and gas projects.<\/p>\n
The founder of Ecotricity spoke out a week after fellow green entrepreneur Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy and a Cabinet Office adviser, backed calls to restart North Sea drilling.<\/p>\n
Vince said the government should scrap the windfall tax on the North Sea and offer subsidies to oil companies that guarantee a minimum price for the barrels of oil and gas they produce.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur North Sea is in decline, let\u2019s protect it during the transition and optimise our use of the resources that are left,\u201d he told the Daily Telegraph. \u201cWe should scrap the windfall tax and protect the industry and its workers \u2013 we need to avoid the destruction of the industry or we will see a repeat of what happened to our coalminers.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Dale Vince: \u2018Our North Sea is in decline. Let\u2019s protect it during the transition and optimise our use of the resources that are left.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Simon Marper\/PA<\/p>\n Jackson said last week that relying on North Sea oil and gas would have a smaller climate impact than relying on costly imports from the US and the Middle East, which release more emissions during production and transportation than homegrown fossil fuels.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we\u2019re shipping LNG, liquefied natural gas, around the world, it is a lot dirtier than using locally produced gas,\u201d Jackson told the Telegraph. \u201cBritish gas producers won\u2019t be selling it any cheaper than the global market. But it is cleaner and it reduces the backlash against climate policy. I\u2019ve got no problem with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s pledge to end new North Sea exploration licences was part of its election-winning manifesto last year and the International Energy Agency said in 2021 that there needed to be no new fossil fuel projects from that point if the world is to stay within safe limits of global heating and meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.<\/p>\n The green industry leaders\u2019 comments on North Sea come amid growing pressure from opposition parties to back the industry, which supports about 130,000 jobs and contributed more than \u00a36bn in tax receipts to the government in the last financial year and \u00a39bn the year before.<\/p>\n The Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the party would aim to \u201cmaximise extraction\u201d of oil and gas in the North Sea if it won the next election. Reform UK has also promised to reverse Labour\u2019s ban as a \u201cday one\u201d priority if it comes to power.<\/p>\n The Guardian reported over the summer that senior government advisers had told North Sea investors that new drilling could still move ahead despite the election promise to ban it, provided the projects were close to existing pipeline infrastructure and did not extend into \u201cgreenfield\u201d areas.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cMyself and a number of colleagues have been told that the government is moving towards the idea of allowing new licences,\u201d one energy investor said.<\/p>\n The source said that while Treasury officials were open to considering future North Sea oil and gas projects, the plans were unlikely to be well received by Ed Miliband, the secretary of state of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.<\/p>\n Miliband reportedly refused to leave his post in Keir Starmer\u2019s reshuffle last week. The ITV political editor, Robert Peston, who first reported the claims, said it was \u201cone part of the reshuffle that didn\u2019t quite go Starmer\u2019s way\u201d.<\/p>\n A government spokesperson said Vince\u2019s proposal was \u201cnot under consideration\u201d, adding: \u201cWe are driving forward our mission to become a clean energy superpower, to cut bills for good.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are delivering a fair and orderly transition in the North Sea to drive growth and secure tens of thousands of skilled jobs, with the biggest ever investment in offshore wind and three first of a kind carbon capture and storage clusters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of Britain\u2019s leading green industrialists has called on the government to offer subsidies to North Sea oil companies to help support a \u201cjust transition\u201d to renewables. Dale Vince, a Labour donor, urged ministers to \u201coptimise\u201d the remaining resources of the declining oil basin as the UK reduces its reliance on fossil fuels. The party<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[680,611,12646,661,867,728,1545,242,268,464,7576],"class_list":{"0":"post-20558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-calls","9":"tag-energy","10":"tag-entrepreneur","11":"tag-firms","12":"tag-gas","13":"tag-green","14":"tag-industry","15":"tag-north","16":"tag-oil","17":"tag-sea","18":"tag-subsidise"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}