Launch of net zero strategy is ‘a travesty’, says green campaign

The government is planning to launch its revamped net zero strategy from the UK’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, in a clear signal of its intention to boost the fossil fuel industry while cutting key green measures, the Guardian has learned.

Next week’s launch was originally dubbed “green day” in Whitehall, but has been rebranded as “energy security” day and will focus on infrastructure. Campaigners have called the move a travesty.

Plans to extend offshore drilling for oil and gas will be cited as necessary to keep the lights on across the UK, and justified by ministers through investment in nascent carbon capture and storage technology, which is untested at scale.

The revamped net zero plans, including a green growth strategy, will contain major sops to the UK’s fossil fuel industries, and will miss out on key green measures. The Guardian has learned that the plans, still under wraps before Thursday’s launch, will include:

• A refusal by ministers to force oil and gas companies to stop flaring by 2025, as recommended in the review of net zero by Chris Skidmore

• Ofgem will not gain important powers to include the net zero target in its regulation of the energy sector, effectively defanging the regulator

• There will be no over-arching new office for net zero, as recommended in the Skidmore review

• No compulsion on housebuilders to fit rooftop solar to new housing

• No comprehensive nationwide programme for insulation of UK housing stock, as green groups have urged.

• The Treasury, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and Department for Business and Trade are at war over whether to introduce carbon border taxes

• Major roles for carbon capture and storage technology and hydrogen, which could boost the oil and gas industry would have questionable gains for the environment • Consideration of licensing a massive new oil field, Rosebank, under cover of investing in carbon capture and storage technology which campaigners warn is “greenwash”.

Environmental experts said they were “astounded” at the rebranding of “green day”, and by the plans to unveil it in Aberdeen, the centre of the UK’s oil and gas industry.

Tom Burke, co-founder of the E3G thinktank, said: “This is Fawlty Towers politics – don’t mention the environment! It’s a sop to the right wing. It’s clear this is not a strategy, just an assembly of lobby interests.”

He warned that the UK economy would suffer: “The problem for the UK is that the US, with the Inflation Reduction Act, and the EU have started the race for a green economy … and we are not in it.”

A last-minute change of venue is still possible, though Aberdeen is the favoured venue, and there are rows over whether the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will lead the launch.

While the government sets out its energy security strategy, a decision on a licence for Rosebank is with Grant Shapps, the energy secretary.

If it goes ahead, new estimates by the campaigning group Uplift show that Rosebank, set to cost £4.1bn to develop, could receive an effective taxpayer subsidy worth £3.75bn, through tax breaks and the loophole in the government’s windfall tax that spares oil and gas investment.

This would mean that Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned company behind the potential field, would pay only £350m to develop Rosebank, which is three times the size of the Cambo oil field. Equinor made £62bn last year, and about 80% of the oil from Rosebank is likely to be exported, rather than bolstering the UK’s energy security.

A spokesperson for Equinor said the company did not recognise the Uplift estimate, and cited a separate industry report that found the Rosebank project could bring £26.8bn to the UK through tax payments and investments into its economy.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero was approached for comment.