Blog by Acland Bryant of the Garden Court Environmental Law & Climate Justice Team.
Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea has been approved again. On 21 October 2026, the North Sea Transition Authority granted development and production consent, following the Secretary of State’s agreement on 14 October 2026 under the offshore environmental assessment regime.[1] This is a setback for climate protection. In a climate emergency, authorising further fossil fuel production despite acknowledged significant climate effects demands a compelling justification, which the published reasons do not provide.
The IPCC’s synthesis report shows why the stakes are so high. Each additional increment of warming increases climate hazards. Limiting warming depends on cumulative CO₂ emissions and reductions in other greenhouse gases. Pathways consistent with 1.5°C with little or no overshoot require steep emissions cuts this decade. The opportunity to secure a liveable future is narrowing.[2] That evidence must frame the assessment of further fossil fuel production.
Key takeaways
- Jackdaw’s approval accepts significant climate effects without a convincing justification. Its assessed gross lifetime emissions of 36.6 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent almost match the UK electricity-supply sector’s emissions in 2025.
- The ICJ’s climate opinion strengthens the demand for scrutiny of cumulative harm and compatibility with 1.5°C. The minister’s conclusion that consent would cause no significant harm requires a fuller explanation.
- The evidence for methane forecasts, the treatment of climate costs and the absence of downstream mitigation raise concrete questions about the lawfulness of the assessment and approval.
- Any judicial review would require urgent consideration. The Government expects production as early as the end of October, making interim suspension or interdict potentially critical.
Why the earlier approvals were quashed
The Court of Session’s January 2025 judgment followed R (Finch on behalf of the Weald Action Group) v Surrey County Council [2024] UKSC 20. The Supreme Court held that the inevitable emissions from burning the extracted oil were indirect effects of the extraction project and had to be assessed in its environmental impact assessment (‘EIA’).[3]
Greenpeace brought the Jackdaw challenge. Uplift challenged Rosebank, alongside separate Greenpeace proceedings. The three petitions were heard together. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Finch, the unlawfulness of the approvals for Jackdaw and Rosebank was accepted. Lord Ericht quashed them, but suspended the effect pending reconsideration. Construction could continue at the developers’ commercial risk. Extraction required fresh consent.[4]
Finch requires informed decision-making and effective public participation. It does not compel refusal, but its significance extends beyond adding an emissions total to the paperwork.[5] The resulting decision must address the project’s climate consequences and explain why those consequences are being accepted.
What the new decision says
The renewed process included further environmental information and public consultation, most recently between 8 July and 10 August 2026.[6] The Secretary of State’s published reasons assess approximately 36.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in gross lifetime emissions, covering direct and downstream emissions in a high-production scenario. They treat emissions as additional for the assessment and acknowledge significant climate effects. Nevertheless, climate effects receive moderate adverse weight, while security of supply receives substantial weight.[7]
For scale, that lifetime total is almost equal to the 37.4 million tonnes emitted by the UK’s entire electricity-supply sector in 2025. This compares the project’s lifetime emissions with one year’s sectoral emissions, using provisional government statistics.[8] This exposes the scale of the climate cost that ministers have decided to accept.
The reasons also accept that Jackdaw will not materially reduce consumer bills and record no project-specific mitigation of downstream emissions.[9] The security case concerns resilience during peak demand if the largest item of gas infrastructure fails.[10]
The Grantham Research Institute at LSE criticises the security case and warns of damage to international climate leadership. Uplift’s response also challenges the claimed security and employment benefits.[11] Other expert responses illuminate the choices. Oxford’s Myles Allen criticises the absence of a carbon capture and storage obligation, while Iain Staffell of Imperial’s Centre for Environmental Policy welcomes the economic and import-dependency benefits.[12] These arguments demand scrutiny of the evidence and of who bears the climate costs.
The ICJ and the significance of 1.5°C
The ICJ’s climate advisory opinion of 23 July 2025 identifies 1.5°C as the Paris Agreement parties’ agreed primary temperature goal. It requires consideration of cumulative harm and explains that failures to take appropriate measures concerning fossil fuel production and licensing may breach international obligations.[13] Its analysis strengthens the demand for substantive climate accountability in fossil fuel decisions.
Annex A of the Secretary of State’s decision addresses the ICJ’s advisory opinion. The minister rejects applying the customary prevention duty to the climate system, but treats it as policy and concludes that consent would not cause significant harm.[14] The opinion’s non-binding status does not make the underlying obligations optional. Domestic enforceability is a separate question. The UKEF litigation illustrates restrained review of ministers’ interpretations of the unincorporated Paris Agreement. That judgment predates the ICJ opinion. The ICJ’s authoritative interpretation of the Paris Agreement and other treaties strengthens the case for examining what remains a tenable view of Paris compatibility.[15]
EIA significance and significant harm under international law are different tests. The ICJ nevertheless requires stringent preventive diligence in the face of cumulative climate harm, assessed objectively.[16] Having chosen to apply that standard as policy, the minister must give a reasoned account of compliance. Read as a whole, the reasons leave an unresolved tension between the brief no-harm conclusion and the acknowledged scarcity of the remaining carbon budget. That tension deserves searching scrutiny.
Why the decision requires legal scrutiny
Five issues require close scrutiny of the assessment and the justification for approval.
First, the quality of the assessment. The Government’s June 2025 guidance explains that a project’s small share of global emissions is insufficient to establish insignificance. It calls for consideration of emissions pathways and cumulative effects.[17] Regulation 14 requires the Secretary of State to explain how the environmental information and representations informed her conclusion.[18] Paragraph 67 accepts a methane-intensity forecast without its methodology or underlying data, relying on the developing monitoring framework.[19] The legal question is whether the minister took reasonable steps to obtain sufficient information and adequately explained why this gap was acceptable.
Second, the distinction between carbon accounting and climate consequences. The reasons recognise that existing and approved projects leave little, if any, global carbon budget available.[20] Counting emissions within the UK’s carbon budgets does not eliminate them. Nor does accounting for exported emissions elsewhere resolve their effect on the global atmosphere. Accounting arrangements alone cannot supply the substantive justification for accepting additional climate effects.
The minister relies on the wider climate framework, relative emissions and the project’s lifespan to justify moderate adverse weight.[21] Those reasons must confront the admitted scarcity of the global carbon budget and the absence of downstream mitigation. The weight itself is a matter of judgment, subject to a rationality challenge. The vulnerability lies in whether the reasons coherently explain accepting the harm.
Third, the claimed advantage over imports. Professor Chris Hilson’s commentary highlights that an advantage over imported liquefied natural gas cannot simply be assumed against cleaner Norwegian pipeline gas. He also warns about prolonged gas dependence.[22] Separately, replacing imports does not prove that foreign production or global consumption falls. The guidance calls for evidence before substitution can contextualise emissions, consistent with Holgate J’s approach in the Whitehaven case to substantiating claimed substitution effects.[23] The minister assesses gross additional emissions and says approval would stand without an emissions-intensity advantage.[24] A challenge must therefore address that alternative reasoning. An assertion of the same outcome cannot, however, cure an unlawful assessment.[25]
The treatment of uncertainty warrants particular scrutiny. For EIA, all emissions are assumed additional. Yet paragraph 212 invokes uncertainty about net global emissions to dismiss quantified climate damages, while economic benefits receive positive weight.[26] Those different treatments require a coherent explanation. The minister separately rejects the objectors’ valuation method in favour of the Government’s abatement-cost approach. EIA imposes no general duty to monetise climate harm, but its environmental conclusion must inform the consent decision.[27] Uncertainty must not become a reason to discount climate costs while crediting benefits.
Fourth, the consequences of keeping Shearwater open. The minister credits infrastructure benefits from extending the hub’s life, while treating further development as speculative. The reasons explain that longer operation need not mean greater production.[28] That distinction requires an evidenced account of what would happen without Jackdaw, including whether earlier closure would prevent extraction which Jackdaw enables. Altered flow rates or later consents do not themselves establish that additional effects are too uncertain to assess. The assessment must address likely significant indirect effects capable of meaningful assessment now.[29]
Fifth, the scope for downstream mitigation. The developer proposed none because it judged the climate effects non-significant. The minister disagreed, yet approved without such mitigation.[30] The guidance calls for suitable mitigation to be considered where significant effects are identified.[31] Paragraph 235 rejects a carbon takeback obligation, citing the absence of a national framework and likely need for legislation. Yet regulation 4(4) permits environmental conditions.[32] Creating a national regime and imposing a lawful project condition are different questions. The scrutiny should address whether realistic mitigation was adequately investigated following the changed significance finding, and whether the rejection of conditions was properly reasoned.
What happens next
The consultation stage has ended. Potential challengers must now examine the Secretary of State’s agreement, the NSTA consent, the assessment and the conditions, and identify any error of law capable of supporting judicial review.
There is a practical urgency. The Government expects production as early as the end of October.[33] Bringing proceedings does not itself suspend consent. Any application for interim suspension or interdict could therefore be as important as the substantive grounds themselves.[34]
The climate emergency is the context in which this decision must be judged. As Kevin Anderson argues, the concern extends to the political precedent for further fossil fuel approvals.[35] Protecting a liveable climate requires rapid emissions reductions and scrutiny of their cumulative consequences.[36] Finch requires those consequences to be confronted before approval. That requirement loses much of its practical force if acknowledging significant effects becomes a routine prelude to accepting them. On the published reasons, the case for accepting Jackdaw’s climate costs is unconvincing.
