THE future of the North Sea has been a contentious issue in recent years. The new licences for oil and gas under the Conservative government have…
government have led to intensifying Just Stop Oil protests with a backdrop of damning predictions of our prospects of reaching net zero by 2050, .mitigation were top of the agenda in the run-up to Thursday’s election down south, while up north, there is growing fear for the jobs and communities which have been reliant on the North Sea oil and gas industry for decades.
The combined capacity of newly licensed offshore wind projects is expected to be around 30 gigawatts – that’s double the capacity of all wind farms in Scotland in 2024. The Kintore Hub, close to Aberdeen, plans to be operational by 2028. Their end goal is to have a 3GW capacity electrolyser, using excess wind energy to produce 0.2 megatonnes of hydrogen per year; almost one-third of the current target for total hydrogen production in the UK.
While there is great potential, there are still many questions regarding hydrogen, as Darren Gee tells me from the Net Zero Technology Centre in Aberdeen. The emissions simply from operating oil and gas extraction make up a significant portion of the UK’s carbon emissions. NZTC is now working to produce a retrofittable solution so that existing oil rigs can quickly switch to alternative fuels without having to replace their machinery.
Finally, on the more controversial end of the journey to net zero is carbon capture and storage . While it is criticised as being a cop-out from the real solutions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the injection of CO2 into empty oil wells is extremely accessible as alternative work to those with oil and gas expertise.
Irvine, who worked for many years at the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal, is adamant that reducing our demand for energy has to go alongside producing renewable energy. Lastly, while everyone agrees the North Sea communities have transferable skills relevant to the new green economy, nobody is naive enough to believe that this job transfer will happen overnight.Buss argues that deliberate policy to retrain the workforce is needed, while others argue for oil and gas extraction to decline gradually to allow time for workers to move from one industry to another.
“This idea that you can just knock oil and gas on its head and stop it is … it’s flawed because we’ve just a cost of living crisis … caused by the price of energy going through the roof.”“The next UK Government has made a commitment to enact our original demand which was no new oil and gas, so obviously that’s a positive step,” said a representative of Just Stop Oil, “but obviously we’re highly cognisant that that is not anywhere near the level of action required.
The other flagship manifesto promise, GB Energy, holds some potential for North Sea jobs as it will be based in Scotland.However, with the SNP losing significant ground, it’s unsure whether the party will be able to push for Scotland to receive a decent share of energy transition funding. Irvine also argues that the current regulatory framework disadvantages small and medium-sized or community energy companies from being able to progress. For example, the Shetland community trust lost out on a stake in the 443MW Viking onshore wind farm, the most powerful in the whole UK because it didn’t meet the Contracts for Difference criteria.
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