Keeping global temperatures within safe limits is incompatible with new fossil fuel extraction, as stated by the International Energy Agency. This should be reason enough to oppose any new North Sea extraction of fossil fuels.
The UK oil and gas industry is already in terminal decline, producing just a fifth of the oil and gas it did at the turn of the millennium. New drilling would not arrest this trend.
The current debate about the need for North Sea drilling risks distraction from a more important question. How can the UK build a low-carbon economy now and in the future?
So far, the creation of well-paid, secure green jobs has not been substantial enough to significantly improve the lives of people across the UK.
Meanwhile, carbon-intensive industries have declined, leading to concentrations of job losses in places such as Aberdeen, where the North Sea industry is based, and Grangemouth in Scotland, where a major oil refinery closed in 2025, resulting in the loss of 400 jobs.
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The challenge posed by job losses is compounded by the fact that building successful green industries in a globalised world is difficult. In Campbeltown on the west coast of Scotland, the planned creation of new wind power manufacturing site failed to come to fruition due to logistical issues and competition from abroad. There are some success stories, such as in the Humber region, where
wind power manufacturing and assembly has generated 1,000 local jobs. But opportunities have not been distributed evenly across the UK.
When communities are faced with a choice between clean energy jobs that they fear may not materialise and the promise of new, even short-term employment in fossil-fuel industries, local people often favour the latter. This isn’t because they don’t care about climate change – most do, but many understandably choose to prioritise short-term economic security.
As one of us (Pancho Lewis) has shown, this occurred in coastal Cumbria. When a plan to open a new coal mine was proposed by a fossil fuel company, it received support by most residents. Environmental campaigners argued that green jobs should be delivered instead, but these were largely hypothetical proposals and failed to rally large numbers in support.
A just and green transition
In the UK, appeals by activists for a just transition towards renewables have been framed around avoiding a repeat of the mass unemployment and long-term social and economic devastation visited on the coalfields in the 1980s and 1990s. But we are now overseeing an unjust transition threatening workers and communities dependent on oil and gas, manufacturing and other sectors.
So, what might be done instead? There are two steps the government must take.
First, by assuming the role of a coordinating body, the UK government can direct, rather than nudge or incentivise, private business. This means prioritising a longer-term vision of investment in strategic industries, rather than being overly dominated by short-term questions about financial return.
Questions of ownership are crucial. The current ownership model of renewables resembles the old carbon economy following the privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s. Renewables are dominated by foreign multinationals, including state-owned companies from abroad. The government should be exploring how the UK could own its own green technology companies, so that citizens benefit when profits are made.
The second step is to recognise that, even while we must maximise opportunities where they exist, we won’t be able to catch up in becoming the leader of all green technologies. Other countries, notably China, are too far ahead. Automation also means that manufacturing progressively depends less on labour power to function. So even countries who are leaders in manufacturing cannot always rely on these industries to provide ever-expanding employment opportunities for their citizens.
The government needs to support citizens to access lives of dignity and economic security, regardless of employment status or sector of work. Andy Burnham’s discussion of the need for more council housing is welcome, given the exorbitant costs that people pay just to have a roof over their head.
This, married with measures to support people in service sectors – the area of the UK labour market where most jobs are overwhelmingly found and will continue to exist – and also policies to tackle energy poverty by providing provide abundant, cheap renewable electricity could lay the foundations for genuinely just change.
A programme of industrial renewal coupled with a more expansive set of social reforms could support a green transition away from carbon-intensive industries while narrowing social inequalities. The debate about North Sea drilling is a distraction which risks turning our attention away from this vital issue.
Pancho Lewis has received and receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. He is a Labour party member and a member of politically active bodies (SERA, Mainstream, LCER).
Ewan Gibbs has received funding from the British Academy and the Scottish government to study energy transitions and employment.