The Iran war has spurred a range of commentators to renew calls for the UK government to issue new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
They argue that new domestic drilling could boost energy security at a time of volatility in major oil-and-gas producing countries in the Middle East.
However, such arguments overlook that the North Sea basin is in long-term decline and issuing new licences would only make a fractional difference to new production.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that the UK’s gas production in the North Sea is set to drop 99% by 2050, when compared to 2025 levels, with new licences pushing this figure down only slightly to 97%. (Oil production is also in long-term decline.)
Additionally, the analysis shows that the continued expansion of renewables and low-carbon technologies offers far greater protection against volatile gas imports than new domestic drilling.
The chart below shows how the roughly 15 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar power secured in the latest UK renewable-energy auction will avoid the need to import 78 “Q-Flex” tankers full of liquified natural gas (LNG) each year by 2030. This gas would cost roughly £4bn at current prices, which stood at 126p per therm as of 11 March.
(Gas can be either transported via pipelines or compressed into LNG and shipped across oceans, as is the case for gas coming into the UK from the US, Qatar or Algeria, for example.)
This is nearly six times more than the extra domestic gas production in 2030 if new licences are issued for North Sea drilling, according to Carbon Brief analysis of data from the UK government’s North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).
Moreover, the 15GW of new renewables were secured in a single auction round. Another auction, likely to add significantly to this tally, is due to take place later in 2026.
Industry sources often stress the potential for the discovery of new North Sea reserves in the future. But, even if such discoveries were to materialise, they would take many years to start yielding gas, even as the UK moves away from fossil fuels altogether.
Other measures, such as replacing millions of gas boilers with heat pumps, would also be more effective at curbing the UK’s reliance on imports of foreign gas, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Even changes to people’s behaviour, such as adjusting the “flow temperature” on gas boilers to save energy while maintaining comfort levels, would reduce gas demand significantly, if performed at scale.
The opposition Conservatives and the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party have called for more drilling in the North Sea. At the same time, they have pledged to end support for renewables, heat pumps and the UK’s legally binding target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, which was legislated by the Conservatives in 2019.
Carbon Brief’s analysis shows that this combination of actions – issuing new licenses for the North Sea while rolling back climate policies – would be very likely to increase the UK’s dependence on imported gas, rather than to reduce it.
(This is in line with analysis from the National Energy System Operator, NESO, which found that reaching the UK’s net-zero target would cut fossil-fuel imports, relative to a scenario that rowed back on climate action while boosting domestic fossil-fuel production.)
Industry lobby group Offshore Energies UK has commissioned statistical modelling that it says shows that more oil and gas could still be extracted from the North Sea than expected by the NSTA, if the government were to make various policy changes.
However, this modelling still shows a rapid decline in North Sea production.
After decades of drilling, the majority of reserves left in the North Sea are oil. Around 80% of oil produced in UK waters is currently exported to the global market.
The UN Emissions Gap Report in 2023 said that the coal, oil and gas extracted over the lifetime of producing and under-construction mines and fields, as of 2018, “would emit more than 3.5 times the carbon budget available” for meeting the Paris Agreement’s aspirational target of keeping global warming to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
At the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November 2025, the UK joined a group of more than 80 countries in calling for a global phaseout of fossil fuels.
Methodology
This analysis is based on additional UK domestic gas production or reduced gas demand in 2030 and is measured in terms of the number of LNG tanker deliveries avoided.
The estimate of additional gas production in 2030 is taken from the NSTA projections published in February 2026. The extra output is from NSTA’s “illustrative” estimates for the development of “undeveloped discoveries” and “future discoveries”.
The gas demand avoided by new wind and solar is based on the latest “AR7” auction for new renewables, the results of which were announced in early 2026. It assumes that offshore wind operates with a “load factor” of 50%, onshore wind at 36% and solar at 12%. The avoided gas demand is based on replacing gas-fired electricity generation.
For heat pumps, the estimate assumes a typical home with a gas demand of 11,500 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, replacing an 85% efficient gas boiler with a 300% efficient heat pump.
It assumes that the electricity to power these heat pumps is drawn from the average mix of electricity generation in 2030. It also assumes that the “carbon intensity” of generation – the emissions per unit of output – falls to 50g of carbon dioxide per kWh, implying that roughly 12% of electricity generation is from gas.
The amount of gas avoided by switching to heat pumps would be roughly halved if all of these heat pumps drew all of their electricity needs from gas-fired power stations.
The post Analysis: Why clean energy will cut UK gas imports by more than North Sea drilling appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Why clean energy will cut UK gas imports by more than North Sea drilling
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Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
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