Aberdeen and the UK oil industry have been promised £500m in state help while support for renewables and carbon capture has been slashed. The future of the UK’s energy capital should be green, not black
That the government should step in with £250m to help ailing Aberdeen, the centre of Britain’s oil and gas industry, seems right given the billions in tax revenues ministers have extracted from the North Sea over several decades. And though it might seem counterintuitive to come to the rescue of a city built on fossil fuels – given the threat of global warming – it also makes sense for Britain to keep producing its own oil and gas until it can find ways of doing without them.