Electricity produced by wind turbines north of the border could power every home in Scotland and reach the North of England, according to new figures.

The wind power output hit a record high during the first six months of 2019, which could also power double the number of homes in Scotland.

Figures from Weather Energy indicate that the turbines provided enough electricity to power the equivalent of 4.47 million homes for the January to June period.

Clean

Robin Parker, WWF Scotland climate and energy policy manager, said: “These are amazing figures; Scotland’s wind energy revolution is clearly continuing to power ahead.

“Up and down the country, we are all benefiting from cleaner energy and so is the climate.

“These figures show harnessing Scotland’s plentiful onshore wind potential can provide clean, green electricity for millions of homes across not only Scotland, but England as well.

Market

“It’s about time the UK government stepped up and gave Scottish onshore wind a route to market.”

The output would power homes from the Isle of Harris to Harrogate in North Yorkshire, according to WWF.

Alex Wilcox Brooke, weather energy project manager at Severn Wye Energy Agency, said: “These figures really highlight the consistency of wind energy in Scotland and why it now plays a major part in the UK energy market.”

This Author

Douglas Barrie is a reporter with PA Scotland.

Kiribati. You may not know where it is. Pronouncing it is tricky (Ker-a-bas). It’s a small republic of 114,000 people spread out over 32 atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, near the international date line and right on the equator. 

Palm trees line the white sandy shores. Turquoise water laps the sand. But is it an ideal island oasis? Hardly.

The battle of Tarawa, a horrific skirmish in the Second World War, took place on Kiribati. And now a climate change battle is crashing on its shores amid a crisis of tuberculosis, leprosy and other damnations. 

Free training 

Most of Kiribati sits about two metres above sea level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that sea levels will rise at least two metres before the year 2100. This gives Kiribati no more than 80 years. 

Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, has said that for “Kiribati it is already too late” and that the international community should consider how people can migrate with dignity. 

In response, Australia and New Zealand offer temporary escape, while Fiji sold 5,500 acres of its land to Kiribati for $8.77 million dollars. If all I-Kiribati, as the nation’s people are known, occupied this land the population density would be about 5,300 people per square kilometre. This violates the UNHCR’s minimum standards for refugee camps. 

But as others work to help the I-Kiribati flee, Cuba encourages them to stay. Havana is training I-Kiribati physicians for free with the condition that they will return to work in their home country. Why? 

First, let’s take a look at what New Zealand and Australia are proposing for Kiribati and other Pacific island nations.

Encouraging migration

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, proposed a climate-change refugee visa program for Pacific island states, including Kiribati. But the New Zealand government scrapped the plan in August 2018 in response to concerns from Pacific island leaders about the self-determination of their peoples.

New Zealand’s immigration minister, Iain Lees-Galloway, noted: “Pacific peoples have expressed desire to continue to live in their own countries, and current work is primarily focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change.”

What does that work look like?

New Zealand’s “development co-operation” with Kiribati includes building hospital facilities, increasing family-planning options, bolstering the fishing sector, improving doctor qualifications and facilitating labour mobility schemes to help I-Kiribati find employment offshore. 

Australia’s development assistance initiatives for Kiribati involves moving low or semi-skilled workers to Australian communities on temporary work visas to help with “seasonal labour shortages.”

If Pacific peoples want to stay on their islands, why do Australian and New Zealand aid programs have not-so-hidden agendas of moving people off of the atolls? 

Medical scholarships 

Certainly it’s more than Washington’s USAID, and Ottawa’s Global Affairs Canada are doing for Kiribati. These are the foreign development branches of two countries with enormous carbon footprints. Neither country is offering any assistance to Kiribati. 

Enter Cuba. The country is offering close to 40 medical scholarships to Kiribati, which will nearly double the country’s physician workforce, and all under the idea that they should remain on the atolls.

Beyond the climate tragedy, Kiribati faces compounding health calamities. Almost 700 cases of active tuberculosis were recorded in 2018, along with 155 new cases of leprosy. While these conditions are often treated at the hospital in Tarawa, there is little in place to prevent these maladies from occurring. 

On top of this is a dengue crisis.  Almost one in two children are stunted, and one in four adults have Type 2 diabetes. Both are the result of serious nutritional deficiencies. The lack of sanitation also makes the country’s lagoons toxic, making rainwater the only drinking water.

Improving health

With only 59 physicians in the country, more are needed. Kiribati’s treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy meets basic needs, but almost nothing is in place for physicians to actively work on disease prevention. 

Cuba’s medical education is well known for building community-level routines of health promotion around the world. 

Compare Cuba’s plan — to build better health from within Kiribati itself — to temporary work permits and a refugee settlement on an overcrowded parcel of land.

It’s a bold statement to offer a programme that encourages skilled professionals to remain in the eye of the storm. And yet it reaffirms the “desire to remain,” as Lees-Galloway mentioned.

It also echoes Tong’s claim that by the time that Kiribati disappears, “no one will be immune from the catastrophic consequences of climate change.”

Climate breakdown

Extreme climatic events will alter human existence. And as they do, the question remains: how well will we take care of each other? 

Will donor nations engage in development co-operation to foster health and livelihoods for a nation of future climate change migrants? Or will it come down to a few temporary visas for low-skilled workers who would otherwise be pressed into a refugee camp? Already, New Zealand has offered additional training and support to the I-Kiribiati graduates from Cuba working in the Pacific. Such support is encouraging. 

But Cuba, in particular, offers a compelling example of how we can take care of each other during the climate crisis, regardless of where we are on the planet. 

Kiribati is the first land to run out of time as a consequence of climate change. Where will be next? And how will we take care of each other?

These Authors 

Robert Huish is associate Professor in International Development Studies at Dalhousie University. Sharon McLennan is lecturer in International Development at Massey University. This article was first published on The Conversation. 

Image: KevGuy4101, Flickr. 
 

Robert Macfarlane’s Underland: A Deep Time Journey is as much a book about the legacy of the modern era, known as the Anthropocene, as about the ancient strata, myths and catacombs of the underland.

In prose both breathtakingly lyrical and brutally honest, the author uncovers the layers of meaning beneath our feet and what we are currently laying down for future generations to uncover.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

In a journey from the Mendips of Somerset, through the mines and forests of the UK, on to the invisible city of Paris and the starless rivers of Italy and thence to the far northern reaches of Norway and Greenland, Robert Macfarlane (often really bravely) descends into the darkness in search of knowledge. As he points out, our common verb ‘to understand’ bears a sense of passing beneath something to fully comprehend it.

Deep time 

Our myths and legends echo with ‘descent’ stories – Dante and Virgil, Persephone and Demeter, Eurydice and Orpheus, Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur – and a long cultural history of abhorrence exists regarding underground spaces.

Claustrophobia, that most prevalent of all phobias, is evoked within them – and, it has to be said, when reading this book. When the author describes traversing a particularly narrow passageway in the Parisian catacombs, my whole being was willing him to run, to get out of there and ascend to the light. Macfarlane states, “I have rarely felt as far from the human realm as when only ten yards below it,” and neither has the reader.

Deep time is the chronology of the underland – epochs and aeons – yet modern time like a ‘dark force’ is eroding and exposing the secrets of the earth. Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save, because the underland keeps its secrets well.

That is, until the Anthropocene, when things that should have stayed hidden are rising up, unbidden: in the Arctic, ancient methane deposits, anthrax and smallpox are leaking through holes in the permafrost; Alpine and Himalayan glaciers are yielding bodies engulfed by their ice decades before; cold war missile bases and chemical stores are revealed as the ice retreats.

When we see these surfacings, we look away, “seized by the obscenity of the intrusions”, by the short-sightedness of our actions.

Our signature

In his description of stone, Macfarlane encapsulates the passage of deep time perfectly: “We tend to imagine stone as inert matter, obdurate in its fixity. But here in this rift it feels instead like a liquid briefly paused in its flow. Seen in deep time, stone folds as strata, gouts as lava, floats as plates, shifts as shingle. Over aeons, rock absorbs, transforms, levitates from seabed to summit.” Salt, too, flows over time. It creeps around, it sags and distorts.

In the salt and potash mines of Boulby, Yorkshire, the author bounces around in the cab of a Transit van to the mine face, many miles under the North Sea. His driver grins at him and says, “We’re out beyond the shipping lane now. Imagine those captains in charge of their boats, with never a clue we’re careering about below them!” Indeed, we know so little of the underland.

What fascinated me most about Macfarlane’s trip undersea was his description of the giant, lizard-like machine that clawed at the seam of potash with its dragon teeth, depositing rock into waiting hoppers at its rear.

The network of tunnels left behind reminds him of termite mounds. It is too expensive to haul the lizard-machine to the surface once its useful life is over, and so it is left in the tunnels to be slowly compressed and distorted by flowing salt and deep time.

“What a signature our species will leave in the strata!” Macfarlane exclaims, imagining future intelligent beings finding the machine and thinking it animal. With great insight, he writes, “Perhaps above all, the Anthropocene compels us to think forwards in deep time, and to weigh what we will leave behind, as the landscapes we are making now will sink into the strata becoming the underlands.”

Wood-wide-web

This review can only touch the surface of the depth and insights of this compelling book.

Learning about the ‘wood-wide-web’ and the communities of mycorrhizal fungi in forests has changed forever how I see trees, and indeed, how I will garden, and Macfarlane’s descent into the ice-blue of a ‘moulin’, a vertical ice-cave made from glacial meltwater, was almost unread­able, so nervous was I on his behalf. 

But in the end, what Underland bestows upon the reader is an awareness of deep time, so that at best it might “help us to see ourselves as part of a web of gift, inheritance and legacy stretching over millions of years past and millions to come, leaving us to consider what we are leaving behind for the epochs and beings that will follow us.”

This Author 

Lorna Howarth is editorial director of Panacea Books and lives in Hartland, North Devon. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Aaron Escobar, Flickr. 

Extinction Rebellion activists will cause disruption for five days this week. They are calling on the UK government to Act Now to halt biodiversity loss and cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025

The Bristol occupation, supported by rebels from across the South West, will be part of a national rebellion called the ‘Summer Uprising’, taking place in five UK cities.

The Bristol occupation will be joined by synchronised actions in Cardiff, London, Leeds and Glasgow. Each city will focus on a different aspect of the ecological crisis. 

Flooding

The focus of the Bristol action is rising sea levels. This reflects the city’s maritime history and its risk of floods, which NASA research warns are likely to be a regular occurrence by 2050 if climate breakdown isn’t urgently addressed.

In Bristol, thousands of residential properties will be at risk and flooding is likely to affect power stations, leading to frequent blackouts.

XR rebel, Bristol resident and mechanical engineer Leo Green, said: “I’m sorry for the inconvenience we’re causing here in Bristol, but given that our children’s future and the stability of the entire planet is at stake, we feel this is proportional action.

“We are demanding our government acts now to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025, otherwise floods, wildfires, extreme weather and crop failures are only going to get worse, leading to mass migration and societal breakdown.”

Alongside the disruptive actions, Extinction Rebellion Bristol will use the occupation to hold lawful Solution Zones with talks, workshops and family-friendly events that Bristol residents can take part in with their children.

Summer uprising 

XR rebel, Bristol resident and business owner Lindsay Berresford said: “As a mum of three young children, it has been really hard for me to face up to the full reality of our climate emergency. However it has become impossible to ignore, as very credible people tell us that there is a real threat of complete societal breakdown.

“I want my children to have a future, a beautiful one at that, and I feel compelled to do what is in my power to make that happen.

“I know that there can be additional barriers for parents to get involved – it’s not easy to find the time to devote to activism alongside looking after my kids and running a growing business – but I really hope that lots of families will come and join us at the Summer Uprising.”

In April, Extinction Rebellion drove the climate crisis to the top of the news agenda by occupying five sites in London: Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Marble Arch, Parliament Square and Piccadilly Circus, with the simple message: this is an emergency. Over 1,100 activists were arrested, including many Bristol residents.

The response to the protests, backed by leaders of the environmental movement such as David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg, was overwhelming and led to Parliament declaring a climate emergency. Bristol City Council had previously made a similar declaration in November 2018. Both the Council and the national government have yet to take the urgent action this crisis demands.

#ActNow

Extinction Rebellion follows the science, shown in last year’s landmark IPCC report, to the conclusion that the only way to avert climate catastrophe is to act now and make an urgent transition to a renewable energy economy.

But from fracking to building a third runway at Heathrow to Britain’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years at Copeland, the government is continuing to back ecologically damaging developments. Human activity is also having a catastrophic effect on plant and animal life, which, in turn, threatens human survival.

Follow the hashtag #ActNow from 15 July to see the Summer Uprising unfold in real time.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Extinction Rebellion. 

School pupils, Extinction Rebellion supporters and a long-standing local campaign group have joined forces against the tunnel, which would cross the River Thames in east London, near the Blackwall Tunnel. 

London Mayor Sadiq Khan seems determined to press ahead, although Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Southwark local councils are against. Contracts are expected to be signed with a construction consortium in August.

The tunnel’s opponents say it would not only add to local air pollution, but also contribute to the further growth of car transport – at a time when the climate change danger means moving towards transport systems with fewer cars.

Downright untruths

The tunnel’s supporters have responded with misinformation and downright untruths. They have made shaky, unprovable claims that it will eliminate traffic congestion, improve air quality and ensure traffic volumes do not rise.

A senior councillor in Greenwich, which supports the project, has argued – against all the evidence – that the new tunnel will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Denise Scott-McDonald, the council’s cabinet member for sustainability, made the claim at last month’s meeting. In response to climate protests, the borough had declared a “climate emergency”, and green campaigners were insisting that that was incompatible with the Silvertown tunnel.

Here are five reasons why the Silvertown tunnel project cannot be reconciled with policies aimed at addressing the climate emergency. 

Air quality

1. Transport for London claims that, by easing congestion, the Silvertown tunnel would achieve an “improvement in air quality”. But research shows that this is very doubtful. 

Queuing vehicles pour out carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, particulate matter and other toxins, as anyone who has been in a traffic jam knows. That is intolerable for people living nearby. But building more roads would be far more likely to spread the noxious mix differently than reduce the total quantity.

Transportation researchers at Portland State University in the USA crunched numbers for congestion-easing schemes, pollution levels, traffic levels and types of cars. They found that “congestion mitigation does not inevitably lead to reduced emissions”, but would more likely increase some emissions while reducing others. And getting traffic moving more smoothly increases the total amount of traffic … and can lead to higheremissions.  

City Observatory, an American urban planning think tank, called the link between congestion and carbon emissions an “urban myth”. They pointed out that, while traffic at 30-40 mph produces fewer emissions than traffic queues, cars moving above about 50 mph are less fuel-efficient and the volume of emissions per distance travelled rises.

Vehicle numbers

2. The main cause of rising greenhouse gas emissions from transport is the relentless rise in total vehicle numbers and total distances driven. This is a global problem of which the Silvertown tunnel problem is a small part.

The climate emergency means that any road-building project must be considered in the context of efforts to reduce the total number of vehicles and the total number of kilometres driven.

Transport accounts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions from energy-related sources; cars account for about three-quarters of transport emissions. Most car journeys are in cities, and urban transport systems need to be refashioned to rely mainly on public transport, cycling and walking.

This means reversing long-standing trends. Car-based transport systems were introduced in the USA before the second world war, and have spread across the world since then. In 1950 there were about 55 million cars in the world, mostly in the USA; by about 2010, the number had passed 1 billion. And it’s not just the cars, it’s the highways, the parking spaces, and the way that built environments are arranged around them.

The reversal will have to start in rich countries: for every 100 people, roughly, the USA has more than 80 cars and the UK 58, compared to 17 in China and 2 in India. The spread of fuel-inefficient, gas guzzling cars – a rich-country trend pushed by car manufacturers in the three decades since global warming was discovered – will also have to be halted.

UK politicians, including the London Mayor, have acknowledged that there is a climate emergency. Turning back the expansion of car-based transport systems is one necessary response.

Road-building projects

3. Road infrastructure projects always result in more traffic and more greenhouse gas emissions. The Silvertown Tunnel will too.

Research of UK road-building projects have repeatedly shown that they produce more car journeys – so-called “induced traffic” – over nearly a century. 

A recent study of 80 road schemes, based on evaluations by Highways England, showed that they produced, on average, seven percent more traffic over three to seven years, and 47 percent more traffic over eight to 20 years. It also showed that economic benefits – such as those being claimed for the Silvertown tunnel – rarely materialised.

In the US, economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that building new roads does not relieve traffic congestion. They named the way that extra roads produce more, longer car journeys a “fundamental law”.

Many more studies have shown that road projects of all kinds help to increase the volume of traffic. That leads to calls for more road projects. 

This is why Greenwich councillor Scott-McDonald’s claim that the Silvertown tunnel would reduce emissions makes no sense. 

Vicious circle 

4. The Mayor and Transport for London have not dealt with the fact that the Silvertown tunnel would be part of this larger vicious circle of more cars and more roads.

TfL’s assessment of the tunnel’s carbon impact acknowledges that more than 150,000 tonnes of carbon would be emitted during construction. But it claims a very low figure for future emissions from vehicles as a result of construction (0.4 percent higher). 

That number has been produced by modelling scenarios. And those are based on a key assumption that overall traffic volumes will be kept down by road tolling. A spokesman for TfL told me that the modelling “demonstrates that overall traffic does not increase as a result of the Silvertown tunnel scheme”, and that “in a high [traffic] growth scenario a higher user charge is applied to manage traffic demand”.

But these claims do not stand up. Road charging might penalise local residents but fail to reduce future traffic flows. A future Mayor might change, or abolish, the charges. 

And, most important of all, decades of research on earlier road projects shows that they are part of a vicious circle. In the end, they always produce more traffic. And that produces more roads. Betting that this one will be different – instead of investing in non-car transport schemes – is playing games with the climate crisis.

Social trends

5. To address climate change effectively, transport policies must focus on reducing the total number of cars, and the total distances driven. This means a sea-change in economic and social trends: dumping road infrastructure projects is just the start.

The point of cancelling the Silvertown Tunnel project is not to leave everything else as it is. It should be scrapped as part of a transport policy for London that reverses for good the inexorable rise of roads and cars.

In place of the piecemeal measures in the Mayor’s Environmental Strategy, an integrated approach is needed that prioritises cheap or free public transport, cycling and walking.

Near-zero-carbon and zero-carbon transport technologies are needed, together with post-fossil-fuel energy systems. The rush hour needs to be made a thing of the past by new ways of working and living. 

Without such a bold approach, the climate emergency is being reduced to empty words.

This Author 

Simon Pirani is author of Burning Up: a global history of fossil fuel consumption, and a Greenwich borough resident.

Image: Ross Lydall, Twitter. 

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.