Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has vowed to maximise the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea if her party wins the next general election, a significant break with the current consensus on net zero. In a speech planned for Aberdeen, she will announce plans to overhaul the North Sea Transition Authority, dropping the word 'transition' from its name and replacing its 12-page mandate with a simple order to extract the maximum possible amount of fossil fuels.
Badenoch argued that Britain 'cannot afford not to be doing everything to get hydrocarbons out the ground' to boost economic growth. She described the current policy as 'absurd', saying the country is leaving 'vital resources untapped' while neighbouring Norway extracts them from the same seabed. 'Britain has already decarbonised more than every other major economy since 1990, yet we face some of the highest energy prices in the developed world,' she said.
The Tory leader criticised Labour's net zero targets, calling them an 'impossible ideology' and a 'unilateral act of economic disarmament'. She pledged to scrap all mandates for the North Sea beyond maximising extraction, stating that 'common sense, economic growth and our national interest' must come first.
Labour has reacted sharply to the announcement. Energy and net zero secretary Ed Miliband accused the Conservatives of being 'anti-science' and abandoning a political consensus on net zero. He quoted former prime minister Theresa May, who enshrined the net zero target in law in 2019, saying that the real climate zealots are 'populists who offer only easy answers to complex questions'.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson reiterated Labour's commitment to a 'fair and orderly transition' in the North Sea, highlighting investment in offshore wind and carbon capture projects. They added that new licences for exploration would 'not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis.'
