Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 33
33
Rejected
Paragraph: 192
The emissions targets currently set under the North Sea Transition Deal are not stretching enough.
Recommendation
The emissions targets currently set under the North Sea Transition Deal are not stretching enough. The Climate Change Committee suggests that it is feasible and necessary for oil and gas production emissions to be reduced by 68% by 2030. We agree. The oil and gas industry has been aware of the contribution of its activities to man-made climate change since the 1990s, or earlier. A responsible industry should have been working to clean up its operations with far greater urgency than this timescale suggests. The Government needs to push the industry to go further and faster than its current approach. Challenging targets for the industry to undergo rapid decarbonisation must be introduced without delay. The fossil fuel industry should not be granted headroom in the UK’s carbon budgets that other hard to decarbonise sectors may need. We recommend that the North Sea Transition Deal be modified to include stronger targets and verification arrangements in line with the Government’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Government Response Summary
The government rejects the recommendation to modify the North Sea Transition Deal, stating that the current decarbonisation targets are sufficiently ambitious and will help to reduce emissions, ensuring the UK Continental Shelf reaches net zero by 2050.
Paragraph Reference:
192
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
77. The Government’s view is that the decarbonisation targets in the North Sea Transition Deal to reduce emissions from operations to 50% of 2018 levels by 2030 are sufficiently ambitious and will help significantly to reduce emissions, ultimately ensuring that the UK Continental Shelf reaches net zero by 2050.