UK on course to miss climate targets, energy secretary admits

The UK will miss its carbon targets and must “electrify now”, the energy secretary has said, while promising a “pragmatic” approach to oil and gas licences.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, who was appointed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in July, said that meeting Paris climate targets was “the first priority and that does require us doing action at home”.

In an interview with the FT, Fahnbulleh also sought to blame the previous Tory government for failing to work out an industrial transition plan for Aberdeen, once Britain’s oil and gas hub, where more than 70,000 jobs were lost over a decade.

“The thing that makes me genuinely angry is that 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago . . . government should have been working alongside industry and alongside the Scottish government and local authorities to come up with a plan,” she said.

“You have to have a plan for a place in order to make sure that industrial transition does not denude our communities,” she added. “That will not be our legacy.”

The Tories and their rightwing rivals Reform UK have increasingly targeted Labour’s net zero policies, which were once the subject of cross-party consensus.

Fahnbulleh said she was “still going through all the evidence” on whether to reapprove two controversial North Sea fossil-fuel projects, Rosebank and Jackdaw, whose futures were thrown into doubt by a court ruling last year.

While Labour’s manifesto pledged not to issue new exploration licences, the government has not shut down new production, for example through so-called “tiebacks” adjacent to existing fields.

“We recognise that we are all running towards renewables and clean power, but oil and gas will be part of a mix because until we have a [power supply] baseload through nuclear, for example, we are going to need oil and gas. So we will make decisions in that context,” said Fahnbulleh.

The government was monitoring global oil and gas price rises which are also driving up UK energy bills, and recognised the unprecedented pressure on households from the cost of living, she said, as it considered policies to provide relief.

“But you do that alongside the things that will fundamentally drive bills down in the long term,” she said, referring to renewable energy.

The 46-year-old was attending Climate Week NYC in New York, working alongside her predecessor Ed Miliband, who is now foreign secretary.

She rejected depictions as being a protégé of Miliband, under whom she served as a junior energy minister: “I think it’s a bit patronising, even misogynistic, to be honest.”

“Ed is a good friend and . . . our politics are very aligned, but I’m my own person,” she said. “I’ve been in the world of economics and policymaking for two decades . . . I don’t really need to be told by other people where we need to go.”