North Sea energy transition enters choppy waters

By Seb Kennedy, associate editor at E-FWD and founding editor of Energy Flux News.

Storm clouds are brewing over the UK’s offshore energy industry. Severe cost inflation and project cancellations have rocked the offshore wind boat. In upstream oil and gas, operators warn of capital flight and job losses from the ‘windfall tax’. With supply chains in mature segments struggling for profitability, the Herculean task of scaling up clean hydrogen and carbon capture and storage becomes that much harder. But there remains a high-level political consensus around decarbonisation, centred on the enduring appeal of the North Sea. Can established and nascent technologies navigate today’s turbulence to meet sky-high policy ambition and keep the ageing basin relevant in the quest for net zero?