Oil projects must take into account their full climate impact, UK court rules | World News

Britain’s highest court has ruled that local councils and planning groups must take into account the full environmental impact of new fossil fuel projects when deciding whether to approve them, a decision which could have far-reaching consequences and which climate activists hailed as a major victory.

In particular, the move will make it more difficult for Britain to advance plans to develop large offshore oil fields, including Rosebank, one of the country’s largest undeveloped oil fields. Located off the coast of Scotland, Rosebank contains approximately 300 million barrels of recoverable oil.

“This is hugely important, not just in the UK but across the world,” Annalisa Savaresi, a professor of climate change law at the University of Stirling in Scotland, said of Thursday’s ruling by the British Supreme Court. “This is not the end of oil, but it is certainly an important procedural step that is long overdue.”

Previously, UK councils and planning groups were obliged to only take into account global warming emissions from their own operations. They will now also be required to estimate and disclose emissions produced by their suppliers or consumers, for example those from oil refining or combustion as fuel. These emissions constitute the majority of greenhouse gas emissions linked to oil production.

This case is one of a growing number of climate change-related cases being tried in international tribunals, domestic courts and U.S. states. In January, a Norwegian court ruled that three permits issued by the government to develop new oil and gas fields were invalid because the environmental impact had not been sufficiently assessed. And in April, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland had failed to meet its carbon emissions reduction targets and must act to address the shortcoming.

The British decision related to a case brought against Surrey County Council, southwest of London, by an environmental campaigner who claimed that a proposal for new oil wells needed to take into account the impact of emissions linked to use of extracted oil. Justice George Leggatt, who delivered the majority opinion, wrote that it was “inevitable” that the oil from the site would be burned and therefore had to be taken into account.

Stephen Sanderson, CEO of UK Oil and Gas, which co-owns the Surrey project, said the decision was “confusing” but added the company would work with local planning authorities to meet the new requirements.