Dale Vince, one of Britain’s most prominent green energy advocates, has come out in support of new North Sea oil and gas drilling in a move that has caught many in the environmental movement off guard.
The founder of Ecotricity, who has spent decades championing renewable energy and bankrolling green causes, says he now backs the development of the controversial Jackdaw and Rosebank fields off the Scottish coast. It is a significant shift from someone who built his entire public profile on ditching fossil fuels for good.
Vince argues his position is rooted in pragmatism rather than contradiction. With energy security dominating political debate since the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices spiralling, he believes domestic North Sea production is preferable to importing gas from abroad. His reasoning is straightforward enough: if the UK is going to keep burning gas for now, better to get it from closer to home than to ship it in from overseas suppliers with far worse environmental records.
The Rosebank field, located west of Shetland, and the Jackdaw field in the central North Sea were both given the green light by the previous Conservative government before legal challenges threw their futures into doubt. Environmental campaigners successfully argued in court that the approvals had failed to properly account for the climate impact of burning the extracted oil and gas. The Labour government has since been under pressure to decide whether to push ahead or pull back.
For Scotland, the stakes are enormous. The North Sea industry supports tens of thousands of jobs across Aberdeen and the wider north-east, and unions representing offshore workers have been vocal about the need to protect livelihoods during any transition away from fossil fuels. Many workers and their communities feel they have been left out of green energy conversations that seem to happen without them.
Vince has previously been a fierce critic of new fossil fuel licences, making his latest comments all the more striking. He has not abandoned his belief in a renewable future, but appears to be drawing a distinction between what is ideal and what is workable in the short term. It is the kind of nuanced position that tends to frustrate hardliners on both sides of the argument.
Environmental groups have reacted with disappointment. Campaigners point out that the science is clear: new oil and gas fields are incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. They argue that backing Rosebank and Jackdaw, two of the largest undeveloped fields on the UK continental shelf, sends entirely the wrong signal at a time when governments need to be accelerating away from fossil fuels, not doubling down on them.
Rosebank alone is estimated to hold around 300 million barrels of oil equivalent. Critics say approving it would lock in decades of emissions and undermine Scotland’s own climate commitments, which have been among the most ambitious of any devolved government in the world.
The Scottish Government has repeatedly stated its opposition to new North Sea licences, with ministers arguing that investment should flow into offshore wind, hydrogen and other clean technologies instead. Scotland already hosts a significant chunk of the UK’s renewable energy capacity and has ambitions to become a major exporter of clean power.
But the political reality is complicated. Westminster holds the levers on North Sea licensing, and the Labour government in London is under pressure from multiple directions. Energy bills remain a live issue for households across Scotland and the rest of the UK, and any decision on Rosebank or Jackdaw will be watched closely by workers, investors and climate campaigners alike.
Vince’s intervention adds an unexpected voice to the pro-development side of the debate. Whether it shifts opinion among those who have long looked to him as a green figurehead remains to be seen, but it is likely to fuel further argument about what a credible energy transition actually looks like in practice.