Keir Starmer Pledges To End North Sea Exploration And Let Areas Profit From Clean Power

Labour will end new North Sea oil and gas exploration, but help communities profit from clean power projects, Sir Keir Starmer has pledged.

Speaking in Edinburgh, the Labour leader vowed to "cut bills, create jobs and provide energy security".

He also said that a previously announced publicly-owned green energy company would be based in Scotland.

Sir Keir is under pressure from environmentalists and the oil industry over the scale and pace of change.

Climate campaigners have criticised the party for rowing back on a pledge to invest £28bn a year in green industries.

In England, planning rules which effectively ban new onshore wind farm developments would be scrapped if Labour won the next election.

Labour has confirmed it would "not grant licences to explore new fields" in the North Sea, a momentous shift for a sector which supports 200,000 UK jobs, including 90,000 in Scotland, according to trade body Offshore Energies UK.

But the party insisted it would honour any licences in existence at the time of the next election, which must be held by January 2025. That is likely to include the controversial new Rosebank development west of Shetland.

Sir Keir said: "Labour will deliver lower bills, good jobs, and energy security for Scotland and the whole UK, as Britain leads the world in the fight against climate change."

He said it would be a "historic mistake" to wait until North Sea oil and gas runs out and let the opportunities "pass us by".

The Labour leader said his party had "a credible plan to manage the change, protect good jobs and create good jobs. No cliff edges."

One of Labour's initiatives will be to provide more incentives for areas to take part in new clean energy projects. Under Labour's plans, GB Energy - the new publicly-owned firm which it says will be based in Scotland at a location yet to be decided - would play a key role in getting that message across.

It would oversee the return of profits from successful projects to local councils. The councils could then use that income to reduce council tax, pay for improved public services or simply provide rebates on energy bills.

Labour says GB Energy could end up providing up to £600m per year to local councils to invest in green infrastructure and a further £400m annually in low interest loans for community projects.

These community loans would be designed to ensure small projects could benefit from the expertise of GB Energy while also generating money for local areas.

Sir Keir accused the Conservatives and the SNP of having abysmal records on renewables.

He said Labour would introduce new rules on "good work, decent pay and union recognition" - and create a new incentive.

This would be "a British jobs bonus that will attract new investment, new jobs, new supply chains into our deprived industrial heartlands and will reward companies that back working people".

Offshore Energy UK's chief executive David Whitehouse told the BBC that Labour's plans to move away from the reliance of North Sea oil and gas "would create a cliff edge" deterring investment and heightening the risk of energy shortages.

Mr Whitehouse said 180 of the North Sea's 283 active oil and gas fields were due to close by 2030, and new licences were "essential" or production would "plummet" and "the UK and its skilled workforce will be exposed".

The GMB union said the UK was going to need oil and gas until 2050 and beyond, and that a ban on new licences "ignores this reality".

But Philip Evans, of Greenpeace UK, said the idea that the plans would "lead to an overnight shutdown of the industry" was nonsense.

Labour's opposition to new exploration licences represented "genuine leadership" he added, and the party was right "to debunk scare stories being peddled by climate delayers".

Mike Childs, head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, welcomed Labour's latest ideas but warned "there can be no backsliding on pledges to stop new oil and gas extraction and invest in green growth".

Environmental groups are particularly vocal about their opposition to the proposed Rosebank development in the North Atlantic.

Industry and government sources say the field could be approved by the UK government's North Sea Transition Authority within weeks.

Norwegian state-controlled oil company Equinor said Rosebank could produce almost 70,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak.

Sir Keir has held private talks with senior energy industry figures in the past week and previously gave direct assurances to Equinor that a Labour government would not revoke any licences.

Instead the party says its focus is on delivering "cheaper zero carbon power by 2030" and its "mission" includes plans to attract and incentivise investment "in the UK's industrial heartlands".

That is likely to provoke comparisons with the approach taken by the US Democratic president Joe Biden whose Inflation Reduction Act has been described by the UK Conservative government's Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch as "protectionist".

The Scottish Conservatives' energy spokesman Liam Kerr described Labour's plans as "ruinous" for the UK's oil and gas industry, claiming they "would throw up to 90,000 highly skilled workers in the North East under a bus pretty much overnight".

The Scottish government said it was committed to "a planned and fair transition" away from fossil fuels that did not imperil jobs.

First Minister Humza Yousaf said Labour governments had squandered hundreds of billions of pounds of oil and gas revenues, and only invested a fraction in Scotland.

"I am not sure anybody will trust a Labour Party on the green economy just two weeks after they dump their £28bn green prosperity fund," he added.