Drilling for more gas and net zero targets do not go hand-in-hand

It has been suggested that natural gas will have an important role in the UK’s transition to net zero emissions. Ministers and energy firms say it isn’t by slashing the production of the fossil fuel, but by boosting it.

“We have resources in the North Sea, and we want to encourage investment in that because we’re going to need natural gas as part of our transition to getting to net zero,” the chancellor said last week.

The Oil and Gas Authority welcomed Rishi Sunak’s remark, saying domestic gas produces fewer emissions than imported liquified gas. And this view was echoed by the chief executive of a fracking firm Cuadrilla, who hit out at an order to plug up shale gas wells. But should we be investing in more gas as we strive to reach our climate goals?

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said natural gas is the “cleanest burning” fossil fuel. However, it still emits carbon dioxide. Plus, its main component is also methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has a much more powerful warming effect on the planet than carbon dioxide, leaking into the atmosphere during several production stages.

A study in 2019 found fracking had “dramatically increased” global methane emissions over the previous decade. Two years before that, US research found gas power plants were emitting much more methane than they were reporting. But some experts reiterate that it is the cleanest fossil fuel which means it can help reduce emissions while we transition to using more renewables.

“Those who talk about gas as a transition fuel don’t seem to get how limited our carbon budgets now are,” Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, said. He was tweeting in response to a report which said Poland’s plans for more gas-fired power plants would derail ambitions for net zero by 2050.

In the UK, there is a target to stop using coal – a “dirtier” fossil fuel – to generate electricity by 2024. From then on, “the most carbon-intensive element” in our national energy system will be gas, Michael Bradshaw from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) said. “To decarbonise our energy system, we need to get rid of gas – not produce and consume more of it,” he told The Independent.

Despite this, one new North Sea oil and gas field has already been given the green light this year with reports that six more will follow. This is despite IEA scientists saying there must not be any new oil and gas fields approved from 2021 in order to get to net zero by 2050.

Zoe Nicholson, from the Green Party, said the focus should be on renewables in the move towards net zero. “We need the government to focus on eliminating fossil fuels from our economy as rapidly as possible and to encourage rapid investment in our bountiful renewable resources,” she said.