‘We must invest in North Sea oil and nuclear power if we’re going to go green’

IN a few days, Boris Johnson will decide on the UK’S future energy policy, after what appears to have been a long battle with the Treasury.

The policy will attempt to do three things: secure our energy supplies, protect families and help us reach Net Zero.

It’s an immense set of challenges. But we must rise to them if we are to have any hope of protecting family finances and meeting our climate obligations.

So how do we do that? In what may appear to some to be counterintuitive, we must ramp up North Sea oil and gas extraction. If we do so, we can secure our energy future and use the proceeds to fund carbon capture and storage.

The Government has already signalled six new oil and gas fields in the North Sea will soon be green-lit.

The fuel in those fields alone is worth billions and the tax generated from them will also be in the billions.

This revenue could be spent on pumping Britain’s carbon emissions under the North Sea where they would be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years.

It will cost £5billion to build the offshore infrastructure but a conservative estimate is that it will create 225,000 jobs and boost the economy by more than £160billion by 2060.

In other words, it will pay for itself many times over.

However, fossil fuels alone will not satisfy our energy demands.we need to embrace nuclear, and quickly.

This is a clean and safe form of energy generation which will smooth the road to Net Zero.

But thetreasury is reportedly hesitant to hand over the necessary cash for nuclear projects.

This latest funding row shows just how near-sighted the Treasury can be.

The Government should be investing now. And not just in big power stations but also in small, modular reactors that can fit on the back of a lorry.

Rolls-royce – an extraordinary British success story – is at the forefront of the development of this tech.

If we invest in North Sea oil and gas, carbon capture and nuclear, then we can achieve all three aims of the Government’s energy policy.

Now is the time to be bold and seize these opportunities.