Latest reports suggest that the UK government is planning to launch its revamped net zero strategies from the UK’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, in a clear signal of its intention to boost the fossil fuel industry while cutting key green measures.
Next week’s launch was originally called “green day” in Whitehall, but has been rebranded as “energy security day” and will focus on infrastructure. Campaigners have called the move a travesty.
According to reports, plans to extend offshore drilling for oil and gas will be cited as necessary to keep the lights on, and justified by investment in nascent carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which is as yet untested at scale.
The revamped net zero plans, including a green growth strategy, will contain major sops to the UK’s fossil fuel industries and will miss out on key green measures.
Green experts and campaigners say that they were “astounded” at the rebranding of what had been widely trailed as “green day”, and by the plans to unveil it in Aberdeen, the centre of the UK’s oil and gas industry.
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Tom Burke, a co-founder of the E3G think tank, said: “This is Fawlty Towers politics – don’t mention the environment! It’s a sop to the right wing. It’s clear this is not a strategy, just an assembly of lobby interests.”
He said that the UK economy would suffer and that the real problem for the UK is that the US, with the Inflation Reduction Act, and the EU have started the race for a green economy.
“That race has gone off and we are not in the race. Green day was supposed to be an opportunity to get back in the green race, but this is just supporting [fossil fuel] lobbies,”he said.
The launch next week will include several key elements and involve at least four government departments. Ministers are compelled to publish a revamped net zero strategy by the end of this month after Friends of the Earth and other campaigners won a court case last year that found the previous strategy inadequate.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
