Some weeks ago, an oil rig arrived in Bournemouth bay and anchored 4 miles offshore, exactly where everyone in the area can see it.
The reason it’s there is to test an area of the sea bed for oil and gas reserves. If it finds commercially viable amounts, the permanent onshore extraction facility in Poole Harbour will drill horizontally into the deposits and pump it ashore. The rig itself will soon disappear, towed to its next project.
Extracting oil and gas nearly always happens out of sight. This very visible presence of an oil rig – easily seen from our office on Richmond Hill in Bournemouth – is a stark reminder of our continued reliance on fossil fuels.
It’s not possible to stop using fossil fuels overnight. However, we must hasten the day that we can lead lives that don’t require fossil fuels to be burnt. The good news is that the UK’s carbon emissions have been driven down by 38 per cent since 1990. That’s the fastest decline of any developed country in the world.
We are part of that success story.
Our company mission is ‘Enabling fossil fuel free living within a generation’. Over the last ten years, the company we’re part of, Vattenfall, has invested £4bn in building renewable energy generation infrastructure and we supply 100% renewable electricity plans to homes around Britain. Anyone taking an energy plan with us is contributing to investment in a renewable future.