The UK, which is hosting the ongoing COP26 climate summit, will not be joining the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance (BOGA), which wants to pledge a fixed date of countries to phase out oil and gas production, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
Costa Rica and Denmark are leading the work to create the alliance, which aims to gather "a group of ambitious governments that are committed to delivering a managed and just transition away from oil and gas production."
During the COP26 climate talks, the alliance is expected to announce new members on Wednesday. But the host of the talks in Glasgow, the UK, will not be among them.
The UK argues that ending domestic oil and gas production will leave a gap in energy supply in the country until it manages to build out enough renewable energy capacity.
"While the U.K.'s reliance on fossil fuels continues to fall, there will continue to be ongoing but diminishing need for oil and gas over the coming years while we ramp up renewable energy capacity," a spokesperson said in a statement carried by Bloomberg.
The UK, which became the first industrialized nation to enshrine the net-zero emissions by 2050 pledge into law, unveiled earlier this year the so-called North Sea Transition Deal, detailing how the UK's offshore oil and gas sector and the government will work together to deliver the skills, innovation, and new infrastructure required to meet stretching greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
The natural gas crisis of the past two months, however, has shown that the UK's gas production is crucial to meeting the energy needs of the nation, offshore industry association OGUK says.
Currently, as much as 47 percent of the UK's gas consumption comes from domestic production, OGUK data shows.
"Our industry is committed to cutting the UK's greenhouse gas emissions and helping the government achieve net zero by 2050. However more than 40% of our electricity is generated by gas and some 23m homes are heated by it so although gas use will decline it will be important for some years yet," said OGUK's chief executive Deirdre Michie.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More