This post borrows from and builds on my four previous posts about Jackdaw and Rosebank.
- Letter to the PM about Rosebank and Jackdaw
- Response to Open Letter to DESNZ about Rosebank and Jackdaw
- There is No Atmospheric Exemption for British Oil and Gas
- Rosebank and Jackdaw: Representation or Repetition
Summary:
The UK Government has now given the go-ahead for the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. This is not simply a decision about one development. It exposes a fundamental contradiction between the Government’s stated climate commitments, its claims about energy security and its obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. Perhaps more damaging still, the decision risks establishing a precedent for other high-carbon developments to proceed on the same or similar grounds, further entrenching fossil fuel production precisely when it must be rapidly phased out.
The arguments advanced by the Secretary of State, Miatta Fahnbulleh, are particularly troubling given their stark contrast with the positions she publicly advocated before taking office. Since those positions were articulated (2021 & 22), an additional 200 billion tonnes of CO₂ has been emitted, while the remaining carbon budgets consistent with the Paris Agreement have tightened further. Against this backdrop, eloquent ministerial statements may offer soothing words in the face of a deepening climate crisis, but rhetoric cannot compensate for decisions that fail the tests of scientific evidence, logical consistency and political integrity.
There is still scope for some reprieve. I hope that the decisions on Rosebank and Heathrow will be subject to rigorous scrutiny against the UK’s climate commitments, and that the Government will demonstrate that those commitments genuinely guide its decisions. That requires looking beyond the overly simplistic and deeply misleading assertions about jobs, economic growth and national prosperity that too often substitute for reasoned argument. These claims must be tested against the evidence, the wider economic and social costs, and the UK’s international obligations, not accepted as convenient justifications for decisions that risk undermining them.
Jackdaw will provide additional gas, with prices set by the international market. It will not insulate UK households from price volatility, and it will deepen our dependence on fossil-fuel infrastructure at precisely the time we need to accelerate the transition away from it. Meanwhile, the resulting emissions will add to climate risks whose financial and human costs are already borne by the public.
The Government has presented its decision as pragmatic. But pragmatism is a political framing, not a physical property of the climate system. More fossil fuels, when burned, mean more CO₂ in the atmosphere, higher global temperatures, greater climate impacts and increased risks of crossing dangerous tipping points.
The decision should be judged against the UK’s international obligations. the science, and the interests of its citizens, not simply the commercial interests of the oil and gas industry or the demands of short-term political expedience.
Keynote points
1. Jackdaw is a decision for the last century. At a time when the remaining carbon budget demands rapid emissions reductions, the Government has chosen to extend fossil-fuel production.
2. Pragmatism cannot negotiate with physics. More fossil fuels, when burned, mean more CO₂, higher global temperatures, greater climate impacts and increased risks of crossing dangerous tipping points. Political compromise cannot change that.
3. Jackdaw will not deliver energy security for UK households. UK gas remains exposed to international market prices. More domestic production offers no guarantee of cheaper bills, while prolonging dependence on volatile fossil-fuel markets.
4. This sets a dangerous precedent. If Jackdaw can be justified through claims about pragmatism, energy security and future technology, what prevents every other fossil-fuel developer from making the same argument? The cumulative consequences are being ignored.
5. Net zero by 2050 has become a political distraction. New gas fields, airport expansion, road building and poorly insulated, gas-heated homes lock in emissions today. A distant target cannot make those decisions Paris-compatible.
6. Renewables only help meet climate commitments when they displace fossil fuels. More wind turbines and solar panels do not automatically cancel out the additional emissions from Jackdaw, Heathrow or other high-carbon developments. The test is whether fossil-fuel use and emissions fall fast enough.
7. The UK is following Trump’s direction without formally withdrawing from Paris. The United States explicitly withdrew from the Agreement. The UK is taking a different route towards a similar practical outcome: retaining the language of climate commitment while pursuing policies that undermine it.
8. This is a test of political leadership and accountability. Governments must be judged by what they approve and the emissions consequences, not by the targets they announce or the promises of future technical salvation.
Closing line: The Government can call Jackdaw pragmatic, necessary or a compromise. But the atmosphere does not recognise political language. More fossil fuels mean more climate change. The physics does not compromise.
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The case against Jackdaw, point by point
1. The climate test is preventing dangerous climate change – not meeting net zero by 2050
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement establish the obligation to prevent dangerous climate change. The Paris Agreement requires warming to be held well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The 2025 International Court of Justice advisory opinion further clarifies the significance of the 1.5°C commitment and of states’ climate obligations.
The UK’s domestic net-zero 2050 target is not a substitute for meeting these international commitments. The relevant question is whether the UK’s actions are consistent with its fair contribution to the Paris temperature and equity commitments.
Net zero by 2050 has become a convenient political distraction: a distant destination invoked to justify decisions that move us in the opposite direction today. The date itself tells us nothing about whether the UK is doing enough, and soon enough, to meet its obligations.
2. The remaining carbon budget demands rapid reductions, not further fossil-fuel development
Even under a relatively generous interpretation of the Paris Agreement, the remaining global carbon budget is severely constrained. To deliver the Paris commitment to keep warming well below 2°C requires global CO₂ emissions to fall by around 8% annually, starting immediately. The rate would be higher for the UK and other developed countries if the equity dimension of the Paris Agreement were taken seriously.
Every year of delay makes the necessary transition more rapid and difficult. Approving Jackdaw commits further capital and infrastructure to extracting and burning fossil fuels when the overriding requirement is to reduce their use.
This is not a marginal technical disagreement. It is a fundamental contradiction between the direction in which the climate demands we travel and the direction in which the Government is choosing to go.
3. There is no atmospheric exemption for British gas
The argument that domestic production is preferable to imports confuses the geographical origin of fossil fuels with their climate consequences. Additional UK production does not displace an equivalent quantity of production elsewhere. It simply adds supply to an international market.
The CO₂ released when the gas is burned contributes to global warming regardless of where it was extracted. Differences in production and transport emissions matter, but they do not make new fossil-fuel development compatible with the rapid reductions required by the Paris Agreement.
As I set out in There Is No Atmospheric Exemption for British Oil and Gas, the fundamental question is not whether we should produce more gas at home or import it from elsewhere. It is why are we still arguing about how to produce more gas when our international commitments require us to reduce fossil-fuel use rapidly.
4. Jackdaw will not protect UK households from international gas-price volatility
One of the strongest political arguments for Jackdaw is that domestic production will improve energy security and, some suggest, help reduce bills. But the UK remains exposed to international gas prices, shaped by global supply and demand, geopolitical conflict and disruptions to production and transport.
Increasing domestic supply does not guarantee that UK consumers will pay less. Jackdaw is expected to meet only a small fraction of UK gas demand, around 2% over a decade. Its production will not insulate households from the international market that determines gas prices.
For many households, energy security remains an empty promise if they cannot afford to heat their homes. Jackdaw offers no guarantee of affordable energy; quite the opposite, by extending dependence on gas, it risks prolonging the very exposure to price shocks that genuine energy security should reduce.
There is a further problem. Every new fossil-fuel development reinforces the expectation that gas will remain central to the UK’s energy system. That weakens the political impetus to move decisively towards heat pumps, better-insulated homes and genuinely low-carbon energy. Why make the necessary transition if the industry can continue to persuade decision-makers to approve new production whenever it threatens to withdraw investment?
5. Jackdaw locks in further fossil-fuel infrastructure and continued exposure to price shocks
Developing new gas fields and the infrastructure needed to process and transport their output extends the commercial and political life of the fossil-fuel system. It creates further pressure to keep that infrastructure operating and producing returns, even as the climate requires a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
The past five decades have repeatedly demonstrated the vulnerability of fossil-fuel-dependent economies to oil and gas price shocks. Geopolitical instability can send prices soaring, leaving households and businesses exposed while energy companies benefit from favourable market conditions.
Jackdaw does not remove this structural vulnerability. It perpetuates it.
The likely outcome is not guaranteed high prices every year, but continued exposure to volatile prices and damaging spikes for years to come, while producers retain the opportunity for wind-fall profit. That is not energy security in any meaningful sense. Genuine security requires reducing exposure to volatile fossil-fuel markets through energy efficiency, reduced demand and a rapid transition to affordable, low-carbon energy.
6. The industry’s profits are private; too many of the costs are public
The commercial benefits of Jackdaw accrue primarily to the companies developing and operating the field. The wider public, however, bears costs that are not adequately reflected in the market price of gas.
These include the consequences of climate disruption, the health impacts of air pollution and the public expenditure required to respond to both. The UK’s existing arrangements for oil and gas decommissioning also leave taxpayers exposed to a substantial share of costs.
As climate impacts intensify, the financial burden on public services, infrastructure, households and businesses will grow. A decision that extends fossil-fuel dependence while leaving the public exposed to these wider costs demands much stronger justification than claims about jobs, tax receipts or energy security.
7. Jackdaw adds to climate risks whose costs are already visible in the UK
The summer of 2026 was provisionally the UK’s hottest on record. The Met Office estimated that human-induced climate change had made a summer of this kind around 130 times more likely.
Widespread fires, heat stress and deteriorating air quality during extreme conditions are reminders that climate change is not a distant threat. It brings real consequences for public health, emergency services, infrastructure and the economy.
Air pollution adds another substantial burden. Fine particulate matter and other pollutants, not least from wild fires, contribute to cardiovascular and respiratory disease, lung cancer and premature death, with major associated health and productivity costs.
Jackdaw alone will not determine these outcomes, and it would be wrong to attribute any individual fire or episode of urban air pollution directly to this field. But its emissions will add to cumulative global warming, while the example it sets encourages other countries to consider expanding their fossil-fuel development.
The result is a further contribution to the risks and costs that governments, taxpayers and future generations will have to manage.
8. Jackdaw sets a dangerous precedent for further fossil-fuel expansion
The decision is about much more than the gas Jackdaw will produce. It establishes a political precedent that other developers can invoke when seeking to expand fossil-fuel production.
If the arguments used to justify Jackdaw are accepted, that domestic production is pragmatic, that it supports energy security, that industry investment must be protected and that future technologies will help reconcile continued fossil-fuel use with climate commitments, why should other developers not make the same case for their own projects?
Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh’s arguments risk becoming a template for further approvals. Each new development can then be presented as a special case, while the cumulative consequences of approving them all are pushed out of sight.
This is how the gap between political promises and climate reality widens: not necessarily through one dramatic repudiation of climate commitments, but through repeated decisions, each defended as an exception, that collectively undermine those commitments.
At almost every turn, UK governments have capitulated to industry lobbying and the promise of future technical salvation. The political safety net is the claim that the UK can continue expanding fossil-fuel production while meeting net zero by 2050, developing renewables and eventually deploying carbon capture and engineered removals at scale.
But the climate does not care about the Government’s net-zero accounting, the number of wind turbines erected or the capacity of solar panels installed. It responds to the cumulative greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.
Renewables and energy efficiency are essential to reducing emissions. But they contribute to meeting our international commitments only to the extent that they drive down fossil-fuel use and emissions at the necessary rate. More wind turbines and solar panels do not, in themselves, cancel out the additional warming caused by burning the gas from Jackdaw, any more than they cancel out emissions from expanding airports or building more roads.
Nor can the decision be justified by promises that future carbon capture and engineered removals will compensate for continued fossil-fuel production. These technologies remain nowhere near the scale required to justify expanding fossil-fuel production today. Capturing the consequences later must not become a licence to expand now.
9. The UK is following Trump’s rejection of Paris, without formally announcing it
Donald Trump explicitly withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement. The UK has not formally taken that step, but its domestic policy is increasingly moving in the same direction: away from the practical requirements of the Agreement and towards the continued expansion of high-carbon activity.
Consider the wider pattern. The UK continues to build homes that are poorly insulated and locked into gas heating rather than designing them for low energy demand and heat pumps. Airport expansion is being pursued at Gatwick, Luton, London City and Manchester, with Heathrow also facing the prospect of a green light. The lower Thames crossing and numerous other new or upgraded road schemes reinforce car dependence and future emissions. Now the Government has approved further fossil-fuel production.
These are not isolated policy choices. They are mutually reinforcing decisions that lock in high-carbon infrastructure and make the necessary transition harder, more expensive and more disruptive.
Remove the smoke and mirrors, the industry lobbying and the promises of future technical salvation, and the contradiction is stark. There is no credible way to reconcile the cumulative direction of these developments with the UK’s international climate commitments.
In backing this direction, Miatta Fahnbulleh and Andy Burnham are, in substance, following Trump’s lead: choosing a political and economic course that rejects the practical implications of the Paris Agreement, without the fanfare of formally withdrawing from it.
The distinction matters diplomatically, but not to the atmosphere. The climate responds to emissions, not declarations of intent. A government can continue to profess its commitment to Paris while systematically approving developments that undermine its objectives. The result is a quiet repudiation of the Agreement in practice.
10. The decision raises serious questions about political responsibility
The case against Jackdaw also raises questions about the consistency of political leaders’ climate commitments.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham championed an ambitious 2038 carbon-neutrality commitment, underpinned by the science-based carbon-budget analysis undertaken by our team. He also recognised that local government lacked many of the powers necessary to deliver the pace of change required.
The scientific evidence has not weakened since that commitment was made. The remaining carbon budget has shrunk, while the consequences of climate change have become increasingly apparent. Yet the wider political direction continues to favour developments that increase fossil-fuel dependence and lock in emissions.
The question is straightforward: if the science justified an ambitious, carbon-budget-based commitment for Greater Manchester, what coherent climate rationale justifies supporting a direction of travel that includes further fossil-fuel production and high-carbon infrastructure?
Political leadership cannot be judged by the ambition of a target alone. It must be judged by the decisions taken to deliver it, and by whether those decisions are consistent with the UK’s fair contribution to the Paris Agreement.
The Government must explain how Jackdaw is consistent with those obligations, rather than relying on distinctions between new and existing licences, claims of pragmatism or a distant net-zero target.
The fundamental point
Jackdaw will not guarantee cheaper energy for UK households. It will not free the UK from international gas-price volatility. It will extend fossil-fuel infrastructure, add to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and reinforce a system whose wider costs are increasingly borne by the public.
Its significance extends beyond its direct emissions. The approval signals that sustained lobbying and threats to withdraw investment can still persuade governments to prioritise the continuation of fossil-fuel production over the requirements of climate science. It sets a dangerous precedent for further expansion, while encouraging the belief that future technologies will somehow reconcile incompatible objectives.
But the physics does not compromise. More fossil fuels, when burned, mean more CO₂, higher global temperatures, greater climate impacts and increased risks of crossing dangerous tipping points. Political pragmatism cannot change that relationship.
Nor can the Government claim that expanding renewables somehow offsets the consequences of Jackdaw, Heathrow or other high-carbon developments. The test is whether emissions are falling fast enough, across the economy, to meet the UK’s fair contribution to limiting warming. The UK’s current direction is incompatible with that test.
This was a decision for the last century. It prioritises the continuation of fossil-fuel production over the urgent need to reduce dependence on it. It exposes the public to continued price instability and escalating climate costs, while allowing the industry to pursue further commercial returns.
The UK needs energy security, affordable bills and a fair transition. Those objectives require reducing fossil-fuel dependence, accelerating genuinely low-carbon alternatives and directing investment towards a more resilient energy system, not extending the life of one that has repeatedly left us vulnerable.