Making permanent the UK’s windfall tax on oil and gas producers would generate enough cash to enable North Sea workers to move to green jobs, research has found.
Cutting current subsidies to fossil fuel producers would free up yet more funds to spend on the shift to a low-carbon economy, according to the report.
About £1.9bn a year will be needed to provide for oil and gas workers to be retrained and to create new infrastructure and green jobs in a “just transition” away from fossil fuels, according to the campaign group Oil Change International.
Of this, about £1.1bn would be needed to help develop the wind industry and create new green jobs; about £440m would be needed to invest in ports to make them capable of constructing and maintaining offshore wind turbines; and £355m would cover a training fund for oil and gas workers.
Coule of billion here, couple of billion there and pretty soon we’re talking real money…..
Bugger me ragged.
What they say are subsidies are in fact just lower VAT to the consumer.
And where are all these “green jobs” ?
Oiling the sodding turbines, sweeping crap off of the solar panels ?
Bloody Guardian … kill…kill…gurgle…froth…
Every ‘green’ job means less stability in the electricity grid. Quite apart from the reduction of inertia there is also the change from a top-down structure to one of essentially uncontrolled sources everywhere at lower levels.
How will the oil and gas industry generate these windfall taxes when all its workers are moving to green jobs?
It really is the most unbelievable bullshit. None of these numbers have any meaning or grounding in reality.
“About £1.9bn a year will be needed to provide for oil and gas workers to be retrained and to create new infrastructure and green jobs in a “just transition” away from fossil fuels, according to the campaign group Oil Change International.”
Firstly, it doesn’t actually work this way. You have what might be called The Lina Lamont Problem, that a lot of silent actors had bad voices and found themselves unemployed when talkies came along. Maybe the mix of skills that makes someone great on an oil rig doesn’t fit jobs in solar.
Secondly, this isn’t what you do. What you actually do in a technological transition is get the younger guys shifting across and the new blood, and the older guys remain in the old industry as it winds down.
Despite everyone’s fantasies, if there’s a green transition, it’s not going to be measured in years. It’s going to take decades. Because pretty much every technological transition takes decades.
Green jobs doing what, exactly? All the solar panels and wind turbines will be made in China, so that leaves the green “consultants”, and they would only make money we enslaved them and made them provide free rickshaw service 🙁
It’s good to learn about all those subsidies we’re getting here in big oil. Here was me thinking that we produce something that’s economically viable, and the government takes a huge cut of the value to subsidise other things.
And I’m excited to hear about my move into renewables, for a worse job that pays less, in one of the few industries more volatile than the one I’m currently in.
Can’t wait.
As others have said: What ****ing subsidies? It’s the windmills and solar panels that get subsidies.
If these green jobs are so good, why don’t those who complain about the poor wages in journalism and writing go off and do them? It would be far more useful to Society.
This subsidies to oil companies malarkey: It seems bonkers to me to claim that they are subsidised when they and their products are so heavily taxed. So I have done a little digging about the accusation.
From what I can tell is that the subsidy claim is made because oil companies claim back from the government the entire costs of decommissioning their rigs, etc. The loons shout “SUBSIDY!”
The reason for this, it seems, is that decommissioning is part of the cost of the whole operation (unless rigs were left to rust and collapse into the sea….) and is therefore part of the costs of production, and therefore tax-deductible. Normally this cost is accounted for by capital allowances/ depreciation, but the government would rather grab tax money early, and leave a successor to fund the costs of tax relief when no new tax is being generated.
This is exactly so and I’m one of the people who has been explaining this, at length, in a number of articles.
Tangentially, I’d love to see a calculation of the cost to the nation (GDP, tax revenue, balance of payments -hence interest rate s and inflation) of a) the freeze on new licences, b) the banning of fracking and c) the veto on new gas extraction in Lincolnshire. Sums get very large, very quickly in the oil and gas business. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it matched Rachel’s £22 billion rather quickly…..
Nautical Nick,
This is why you just apply a Pigou tax and let the market get on with it. Is it worth fracking, including all the costs of pollution (and some money to locals)? Do it. If not, don’t.
Current rules (unless they’ve changed since I read about them) stipulate that all N Sea structures must be removed and nothing left higher than 1 metre above the sea bed.
This is a waste of money. Far better to chop the platforms down to below a ship’s draft. This would create a series of nature reserves where the bloody trawlermen wouldn’t dare go for fear of losing their gear.
@philip
There is a current presumption that things will be removed and a clean seabed left. However, there are certain things that can be left in place if they meet certain conditions. These conditions are currently tightening, though it’s not clear exactly how much.
Platforms need to come out – you can leave the footings of big platforms in place…well you could, but that seems to be changing. Pipelines can be left in place if they’re sufficiently buried or are big enough not to pose a threat to fishermen.
Liability for anything left in place stays with the operator forever.
Decommissioning is an expensive business, and there’s no tax you can claim back if you’re not making money elsewhere in the basin. So operators will have to pay the full whack when they get to their last assets.
So, Britain can convert to a communist economy for only about £1.9bn a year.
Deal of the Century !!!
Fiona Harvey writes comedy. And, presumably, Guardian pays her for it.
Engineering thought experiment: suppose wind and solar and batteries of course were the only energy sources for generating electricity in town, and coal, oil, gas and coal with their vast turbine halls were a few decades away. Would you run a grid on AC still, transmit the electronVolts at 400kV, and have a grid frequency of 50Hz +/-1%.?
Bongo: There wouldn’t be any wind, solar or batteries, as it required the stable supply from big rotating steam turbines to allow those things to be developed.
Early in its life, electricity generation was local with AC at various voltages & frequencies and DC at various voltages. Then common sense prevailed. Except in Japan.
Nick and Tim are right about the tax position being counted as a ‘subsidy’, but so is the fact that domestic gas supplies attract a lower than standard rate of VAT (5%). This tax is a ‘subsidy’ in green fantasy land. Roughly ⅔ of the cost of every litre of petrol/diesel sold is tax (apart from ‘red’ diesel).