A new ruling by a British court has called time on two big fossil fuel projects, illustrating again how judges are now powerful players in the energy transition.
The Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field were given the green light by the UK’s previous government back in 2023. That decision immediately triggered legal action by environmental groups that are against the expansion of fossil fuel production.
On Thursday, a Scottish court decided that the projects should not have been approved and ordered that no gas or oil can be extracted from the two sites.
Many arguments were made in favour of withdrawing approval for the projects, including a lack of economic benefits, a weak case for improved energy security and, of course, the incompatibility of extra drilling with our international climate targets.
But in the end it was another, separate court case that laid the foundations for this week’s ruling. In 2024, the United Kingdom’s supreme court made a landmark ruling that is having an impact not only in Britain but around the world.
It concerned a relatively small scale oil site in the south of England, almost inconsequential in size compared with the mighty Rosebank offshore zone, which is the UK’s biggest untapped oil reserve.
In what is looking increasingly like one of the most important legal rulings in recent times, the court said that fossil fuel extraction projects must take into account the emissions their products will generate once extracted.
Essentially, the argument that many energy companies have made in the past, that what customers do with petrol, diesel, kerosene and so on, is none of their concern, no longer holds water.
The supreme court clarified that it is “inevitable” that those fuels will be burned and release climate-warming gases, so the companies that produce them are indeed responsible.
Prospective developers now have to include those emissions in their environmental impact assessments, which are key to getting a drilling permit in the first place. Projects can still be approved but this extra criteria makes the likelihood much lower.
This is why Rosebank and Jackdaw were cut down by the court. Their applications, lodged and approved before the supreme court ruling, did not account for those emissions. They will have to resubmit them in order to move the projects forward.
According to the current UK government, which has pledged not to grant any new offshore drilling licences, it will consult on the issue and report back in the spring. The projects could still move forward though, as they require production rather than drilling licences, a potentially crucial detail.
UK law often sets a legal precedent or at least influences court rulings in other jurisdictions and other climate cases in Poland and Southeast Asia have already cited the supreme court ruling in their lawsuits.
Cheap renewable energy, mounting evidence about the increasing impact of climate change on our societies and public protests may not be the triggers for the end of the fossil fuel age, it may be the legal wranglings of court cases like these.
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