The UK government is issuing new licenses allowing fossil fuel companies to explore for oil and gas in previously declared North Sea offshore wind zones.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has offered 31 licences in its latest oil and gas round, it said on Friday, with a number overlapping with areas earmarked for wind power.
“The granting of an exploration licence does not eliminate the use of that area for offshore wind, and we wholly support the use of offshore wind as a means of power generation,” said the NSTA.
“The NSTA has worked closely to manage any potential overlaps and for the first time have agreed a new co-location clause which means that for any activity to take place oil and gas operators will have to come to an agreement with wind lease holder[s] on how to proceed before further permission for activity is granted.”
This mechanism will it said “resolve spatial overlaps and to support co-existence of these important industries.”
RenewableUK CEO Dan McGrail said: “Whilst we respect that the North Sea is a shared space, with the natural environment and other industries to consider, the government should be crystal clear that their priority is renewables over oil and gas.
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“Offshore wind is going to be the backbone of our future system, not fossil fuels.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has regularly provoked the wrath of the renewables sector and environmental groups during his time in office.
Last year he faced uproar for rolling back on green goals – including for electric vehicles and heat pumps – and issuing oil and gas licences in an apparent bid to revive his ailing re-election campaign
The anti-green swing has done nothing to revive his political fortunes, however, with his Conservative Party suffering a string of embarrassing by-election losses – while incoming results from council elections on Thursday paint a bleak picture for Sunak’s party.
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and BloombergNEF have found in separate recent analyses that the UK is now going backwards on its energy security and climate goals at least partly due to Sunak’s policies.
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that: “To strengthen our energy security and grow the economy, we want to maximise the huge energy potential of the North Sea.
“We will continue to need oil and gas over the coming decades as we increase our share of renewables; that’s why we welcome the work by the NSTA and the Crown Estates to facilitate the co-location of wind and oil and gas projects as the offshore space gets busier.”
Should the new licences provoke conflict between fossil fuels and offshore wind developers, it would not be the first time they have been at loggerheads in the North Sea.
In 2022, Danish renewables giant Orsted clashed with BP over an overlapping zone, accusing the supermajor of trying to force its 2.6GW Hornsea 4 development out of the area.
Hornsea 4 is on a list seen by Recharge of offshore wind projects facing overlap with the latest oil & gas exploration licenses.
Others include the giant Norfolk Boreas and Vanguard projects now owned by RWE, and several areas in the Dogger Bank zone where SSE and Equinor and currently building 3.6GW of capacity.