Coronavirus Brings North Sea Oil's Need for a Just Transition Into Focus
With the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve pumping enormous sums into financial markets in response to the crisis, the immediate decisions taken now about how the North Sea functions in a world of prolonged oil price instability, will have major implications.
Last year, an alternative was suggested by Johanna Bozuwa and Carla Skandier of Democracy Collaborative, in a paper for Common Wealth. They point out that central banks could, for a fraction of the outlay involved in fiscal stimulus programmes, purchase majority stakes in fossil fuel companies:
“Answerable to the public and without the growth imperative, the government would be much better poised to manage their decline by directly cutting fossil fuel production from existing and under development sites in accordance with a 1.5 C global heating rise limit – as well as stopping new developments that are clearly outside the carbon budget,” they argue.
