The Jackdaw decision weighed energy security, jobs and emissions, but left an outstanding question that requires closer attention: who gains from more gas and its revenues, and who pays?
In late October, Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh cleared the way for gas production at Jackdaw, 150 miles east of Aberdeen. The government’s announcement promised homegrown gas, protected jobs and warmer homes this winter, alongside a £2 billion Energy Wealth Fund for clean energy investment, and insisted that the decision would not compromise the UK’s net zero target. Commentary has since questioned its implications for household bills, jobs and challenged the justifications for Jackdaw and Rosebank from climate science and political accountability perspectives. But a deeper concern should not be overlooked: Jackdaw carries an extractive economic model and its inequalities into a future that only looks greener on paper.
Homegrown gas: Energy security for whom?
Energy security is widely understood as the uninterrupted availability of energy at an affordable price. Jackdaw adds some short-term security of supply, raising domestic gas production by around 6% at its peak but meeting only about 2% of UK gas demand over its lifespan of up to 11 years. Another decade of lock-in also narrows the room to diversify supply and slows the deployment of proven low-carbon technologies (e.g solar PV, offshore wind, geothermal, nuclear fission), leaving policy trapped in crisis management rather than long-term, transformative planning.
Nor can Jackdaw protect households from gas prices set on international markets, where the UK is a ‘price-taker’ exposed to geopolitical shocks. The decision document says as much: Jackdaw would neither end the UK’s reliance on imports nor affect prices, even as the PM promises lower bills.
A survey found that 1.7 million households plan not to turn their heating on at all this winter, and more than a third of them say they could technically afford, which suggests many people ration heat in anticipation of bills well before they fall behind. Insulation, heat pumps and rooftop solar would reduce these households’ exposure to gas prices in a way Jackdaw cannot. The Government champions homegrown gas as a solution to energy security, yet its Budget on 28th October cut £1 billion from the Warm Homes Plan, which funds those upgrades, to help cover a shortfall in defence spending. The Budget also appears to divert up to £4.7 billion more from the Plan, and leaves zero-rated VAT on solar panels and other energy-saving materials for homes to lapse after March 2027. For the UK families struggling to heat their homes, what good is homegrown gas if they still cannot afford it?
Safeguarding what remains or building what comes next?
The Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander, called the approval ‘a win for Aberdeen’ alongside the evidence that the developer estimates 27 new direct jobs and 273 safeguarded ones. By comparison, Aberdeen’s Energy Transition Zone has projected up to 2,500 direct jobs by 2030, alongside 10,000 energy transition-related jobs across the wider region. The stark comparisons raise an obvious question: why are the 27 new direct jobs from Jackdaw more valuable than the potential creation of thousands of jobs in the energy transition? Since the 2014 oil price slump cut around 120,000 jobs supported by the UK industry in two years, safeguarding what remains has repeatedly come before building what comes next.
Half a century of extraction has entrenched Aberdeen’s inequalities. Otchere-Darko and Weszkalnys showed how oil deepened divisions in a city that was already unequal, its affluence settling in the West End and northern suburbs while part of Torry sits among Scotland’s most deprived 10% of areas. Extraction jobs rise and fall with the fossil fuel price, and Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire have had Scotland’s slowest growth in real median earnings over the past decade, at 0.2% a year. Each new field defers these questions by another decade.
The paradox of the Energy Wealth Fund
Announced alongside Jackdaw’s approval, the Energy Wealth Fund will use tax revenues from North Sea oil and gas to invest in the low-carbon energy meant to replace them. That makes the transition away from fossil fuels depend on further extraction, after the International Energy Agency warned that net zero pathway left no room for new oil and gas fields after 2021. The Fund’s timing, scale and intentions are mismatched with that task. After more than half a century of extraction and around £200 billion in tax revenues, the UK is only now establishing a fund starting with £2 billion.
The fund also sets a fiscal trap. As fossil fuel production declines, so does the revenue meant to finance the transition. This creates another economic incentive to prolong extraction, reinforcing the infrastructure and political interests that favour further production over rapid innovation and the upscaling of low-carbon alternatives. Some may argue that the Fund complies to the “polluter pays principle” but this misinterprets the principle’s foundation: that polluters are responsible for paying for their pollution and should be encouraged to actively seek transitions, not that creating new polluters so that they can pay.
Redirecting some revenues towards renewables does not scrutinise who controls investment and who benefits from it. The fund will sit within the National Wealth Fund, which aims to attract £3 of private investment for every £1 of public money, a model that critics warn can channel returns to private investors. Nor are the benefits guaranteed to reach the communities that need them most.
Excessive emissions, unequal burdens
The UK’s historical emissions leave no fair room for more extraction, which would come at others’ expense worldwid and deepen inequality at home. Developers estimate Jackdaw’s lifetime Scope 3 emissions at 23.6 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in its central case and 35.8 million tonnes in the high case, around 85% of which comes from combustion. The government argues that Jackdaw could displace more emissions-intensive imports. Yet on the developer’s own figures, replacing US liquefied natural gas would save about 4 million tonnes in the high case, while combustion would still release about 30 million tonnes, whichever field the gas comes from.
Those emissions will not land evenly, any more than this summer’s heat did. Just two of its heatwaves, in May and June, caused an estimated 2,877 excess deaths in England, falling hardest on older people, people with health conditions and those in the worst housing. Each new field adds to the burden on communities already struggling with heat and high bills, on the countries least responsible for the crisis, and on generations not yet born.
The decision also costs trust. After this summer’s heat, 74% of Britons say they are concerned about climate change, yet only 13% think the government has done a good job on it. Approving new gas production while ministers insist they ‘remain resolute in ending new licences’ only widens that gap. Internationally, Jackdaw was approved less than three weeks before COP31, weakening the UK’s voice just when it needs to persuade other countries to move faster.
Enough is enough
Jackdaw’s green light prolongs the extractive past more than it leads us to a greener future. That choice deserves serious scrutiny, and the JUST Centre’s Good Futures Framework offers a guideline worth embracing. Designed for local and regional policymakers, it brings the social, economic and environmental considerations of climate decisions together. Yet decisions like Jackdaw are taken nationally, from top-down and land in places that have no formal say over them. To borrow the climate change agreement principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, every level of government shares responsibility for a just transition, but the government that takes the decision should bear the greater share. That requires joined-up national decision-making that weighs the consequences for the places that will live with them.
Going forward, policymakers should:
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Sufficiently fund the Warm Home Plan to accelerate decarbonisation for affordable retrofit, electrify transport and industry via proven low-carbon energies, and back community-owned energy, without relying on future fossil fuel revenues.
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Halt further fossil fuel approvals pending rigorous scrutiny of their cumulative emissions, the UK’s international climate responsibilities and wider social consequences. This must include Rosebank, whose output is already factored into the forecasts underpinning the Budget.
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Put justice at the centre of investment and decision-making, including the Energy Wealth Fund, by establishing a UK-wide just transition commission following Scotland’s model. Transition planning with oil and gas workers and their communities should start now to explore low-carbon alternatives like geothermal, enabling them to shape their own futures and avoid reproducing existing inequalities.
The climate will not give Jackdaw’s emissions a green light simply because the gas comes from the North Sea. Nor will it reward us for claiming that the approval will not compromise net zero by 2050 while neglecting the urgency of acting today. Enough is enough.
