Proactive Investors - Keir Starmer has vowed to put an end to new oil and gas investment in the North Sea if he gets into power.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Labour party leader said he wanted instead to create a “clean power alliance” to rival the Opec oil producers cartel.
“What we've said about oil and gas is that there does need to be a transition,” he said. “Obviously it will play its part during that transition but not new investment, not new fields up in the North Sea, because we need to go towards net zero, we need to ensure that renewable energy is where we go next.”
Britain is currently undertaking its first North Sea licensing round since 2019 in an effort to reduce its dependence on Russia and other hostile suppliers.
That is in spite of a commitment by former PM Boris Johnson that the country will be carbon-zero by 2050.
Prices of gas and electricity have soared since Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off supplies to Europe and many commentators believe it will be impossible to generate the power required in the future without fossil fuels.
One Davos delegate, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy chairman of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, told the forum there was “no scenario, even by the most optimistic, that will give us confidence that renewables can achieve the scale necessary with the urgency we need”.