Recently issued guidance from the UK government imposes a tough new test for assessing the climate impacts of new oil and gas projects.

The Rosebank oil field off the coast of Shetland – the UK’s biggest undeveloped field – will be one of the first fields that will be subject to the new test, although the guidance will affect all other projects at the development consent stage.

Rosebank’s proponents – the largest of which is Norwegian state-owned petroleum company, Equinor – estimate that it will produce the equivalent of up to 500mn boe between 2026 and 2051. When burned, this oil will produce up to 200mn tonnes of CO₂ – more than the combined annual emissions of 28 low-income countries.

It is the climate impacts of those ‘combustion emissions’ that will now need to be taken into account by proponents when preparing or supplementing their environmental impact assessments. In law, this requirement follows from a string of recent court cases; the new government guidance fleshes out the government’s expectations about how combustion emissions should be calculated and presented, so as to transparently inform decision-makers and the public about their climate impacts.

Five features of the new guidance are especially noteworthy:

• Proponents must calculate their projects’ ‘Scope 3’ (combustion) emissions on the presumption (rebuttable with evidence) that they will be combusted by end-users.
• The fact that a project’s combustion emissions may occur overseas and be subject to other countries’ climate mitigation laws does not preclude the need to assess the climate impacts arising from those emissions in the UK’s environmental assessment process.
• The impact of the project’s emissions must be assessed in light of internationally-agreed climate goals, including remaining global carbon budgets and emissions reduction pathways, consistent with achieving the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.
• The project’s emissions must be assessed in light of cumulative impacts, not only from historical emissions sources but also emissions from ‘existing and planned’ future projects globally. 
• The impact of the project’s gross emissions must be assessed, without netting off emissions that the proponent may allege would be avoided thanks to market substitution effects (any purported substitution can be documented separately but must be substantiated with evidence).

Climate implications 
In a recent report published by the UCL Policy Lab, UCL Energy Institute and UCL Department of Political Science, two colleagues and I review the evidence concerning the climate implications of new oil and gas fields in the UK. Our findings suggest that it will be very difficult for new UK oil and gas fields to pass the government’s new climate test.

First, we show that there is a rapidly dwindling global carbon budget for holding temperature increases to below 1.5°C of warming. Globally, the cumulative emissions from burning the fossil fuels in oil and gas fields and coal mines that are already operating or under development far exceed that carbon budget. In this context, the combustion emissions of new fields like Rosebank can only be seen as highly significant because they add considerably to that excess.

Second, we highlight research showing that projected production from existing fields is sufficient to meet or exceed demand in modelled economic scenarios in which climate warming is restrained to within 1.5°C, providing further evidence that new fields are not consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.

This does not mean that Rosebank and other new fields cannot receive development consent: the Secretary of State must weigh up the environmental impacts with the economic and social benefits of the project (the limited extent of which has been highlighted by others) and reach an overall decision in the national interest. But it does mean that the climate impacts of any new field will weigh heavily in that overall balance.

Projected production from existing fields is sufficient to meet or exceed demand in modelled economic scenarios in which climate warming is restrained to within 1.5°C.

International law
What’s more, any UK approval of new fossil fuel extraction projects could be in violation of international law. In July, the International Court of Justice handed down its landmark Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states in respect of climate change. The Court affirmed the longstanding principle that states have a duty ‘to prevent significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence’, including by controlling the harmful activities of private actors. The Court also recognised that developed countries must satisfy a more demanding standard of due diligence.

The Court affirmed that the due diligence requirement applies to actions that cause environmental harm from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, adding that: ‘Failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from GHG emissions – including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies – may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State.’

Given the climatic and legal context, it will be difficult for the UK government to justify approving new oil and gas projects. Doing so, moreover, would send a damaging signal to the international community that business-as-usual fossil fuel expansion is morally acceptable despite the escalating climate crisis.

Scientific fact, domestic policy and international law all now point in the same direction: it is time for the UK to show that new fossil fuel projects are unacceptable.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author only and are not necessarily given or endorsed by or on behalf of the Energy Institute.

• Further reading: ‘International Court of Justice publishes landmark opinion regarding climate change accountability’. The UN’s International Court of Justice gave a landmark ‘advisory opinion’ on 23 July stating that nations can be held legally accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions. However, the opinion is non-binding.
• Policy, not geology, will decide the North Sea’s future, according to Michael Tholen, Director of Policy and Sustainability at the UK offshore energy trade association OEUK.