Jackdaw is the wrong decision

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There is a certain superficial logic in the government’s argument in approving the exploitation of the Jackdaw field that, if we are going to burn natural gas, there is an advantage in burning domestically-produced gas rather than imported gas. Whether the quantity of gas being supplied is really enough to make a significant difference to the UK’s energy security is another question, however. It’s a relatively small proportion of the UK’s gas consumption, over a relatively short period. And we already know that, even if it marginally reduces the risk of supply disruption due to war or other factors outside our control, and despite the rhetoric coming from some quarters, it will not have any impact on energy prices for the consumer.

Whether it will really add £2.9 billion to the UK economy is another contentious statement – it really depends on what the resources being deployed or retained in the gas industry might have been used for otherwise. An equivalent investment in renewables or energy conservation would add more to GDP – and it would certainly add more jobs to the economy.

In environmental terms, some have tried to present it as being in some sense ‘neutral’. The UK will end up burning the same amount of gas overall, it’s just using gas from  a different source. That is, though, taking a narrowly UK-focused view. The bigger question, in terms of climate change, is whether exploiting this new gas field will replace gas which would have been produced elsewhere, or whether it will add to the world’s total gas production. In the former case, if that gas from elsewhere is no longer extracted, then the decision could indeed be neutral overall. The only safe way to reduce fossil fuel use is to leave some in the ground, and in global terms, it doesn’t matter a lot which is extracted and which is left below ground; it’s the total which is important.

But how likely is that? It is far more likely – a certainty, many would argue – that the decision taken today by the UK government will lead to more gas in total being extracted and burned. There is a sense in which the government is probably right to say that “the Jackdaw project will not prevent the UK from being able to meet its legally binding limits on carbon emissions and achieve net-zero by 2050”, but that depends on taking a very narrow view of the UK government’s responsibilities in relation to climate change. Taking a wider view, outside the UK the result of today’s decision is that there will be more gas available for others to burn. For those who believe that man-made fossil-fuel-driven global warming isn’t real, that isn’t a problem. But the UK government doesn’t put itself in that camp, and a global problem demands a global response, not just a localised one.

Today’s decision places the UK government in a position of directly undermining its own stated position. It isn’t the only government doing that, of course. And other governments are doing far worse things by actively seeking to ramp up the use of fossil fuels. That is no excuse, though. The government has today placed itself – and the UK – on the wrong side of the debate about the future of the planet.