It is a contradiction but here's why Jackdaw and Rosebank matter to net zero

One of the hardest lessons I learnt in politics was, sometimes to achieve the outcome I wanted I needed to make choices which appeared to go against what I believed in. When I was convenor of education, we surveyed 6000 school pupils asking how to improve their education experience. High amongst their many responses was improving school buildings. They were very clear; poor buildings impacted motivation to learn. We already knew the school estate needed investment but here was the voice of young people telling us it was not just a question of new bricks and mortar but of how we helped maximise their ability to make the best of their future.

The problem for me was the only funding available for school infrastructure was via Public Private Partnerships, (PPP) where private money was used to build public assets and repaid via a “lease back system”. There were many reasons I objected to PPP, not least the overall higher cost and the myth of transfer of risk to the private sector. I had a choice. Do I campaigning for alternative finance from the Government which would have kept my principles pure but delayed new schools indefinitely.

Or despite my fundamental objections, do I try to make PPP work as best as I could and get new schools on the ground as quickly as possible, and in doing so, follow another principle of listening to young people when making choices about their education. I chose the latter. I got pelters from many for doing so, but we build or refurbished around 30 per cent of the education estate; the biggest such investment since the 19th century. I still did not like PPP.

The deals we struck were not perfect and have brought real challenges, but I still believe they were compromises worth making for education of our young people. Those making the decisions about the license to drill for oil and gas in the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields face same contradiction; two opposites can be true at the same time. We need to get to net zero as quickly as we can, but counterintuitively, we need the fossil fuels Jackdaw and Rosebank fields will give us to get there.

A smooth transition to net zero cannot have cliff edges nor cliff faces. We cannot shift our energy supply infrastructure to renewables overnight. 85 per cent of homes across Britain still use gas for heating and cooking, 27 per cent of our electricity comes from gas fired power stations, which on same days produce half our electricity needs. Three fifths of our gas needs is imported and given we are more dependant than ever on American gas which comes from cracked shale, which is much more environmentally damaging.

Increasing our domestic supply is the best compromise as it gives us lower emissions than imported gas, more security of supply and additional tax revenue as well as protecting jobs whilst the transition to net zero continues. I wish it were different. We shouldn’t be in this position. Political indecision on implementation of Net Zero over the last 10 years at Westminster and Holyrood is the root cause of why we face this contradiction.

But without living with appearing to be heading backwards to go forwards, we will make the fundamentally necessary transition to Net Zero even more challenging than it already is.