New UK energy secretary Fahnbulleh faces North Sea drilling test

Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed as the UK’s secretary of state for energy and net zero, taking over from Ed Miliband. The MP for Peckham becomes the first member of the 2024 parliamentary intake to be handed a full cabinet position in Andy Burnham’s government.

Her first major test will dictate the trajectory of the UK’s energy transition. Fahnbulleh must decide whether to approve drilling at the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields off the north-east coast of Scotland, a politically thorny decision her predecessor avoided.

These projects fall outside the Labour government’s ban on new North Sea licences because their applications were already underway before the party took office. Miliband previously described the Rosebank licence as “climate vandalism.” Tessa Khan, executive director of the campaign group Uplift, warned: “The reality is that the science is very clear. Burning the reserves in existing oil and gasfields will blow the global carbon budget and breach the 1.5C climate limit the government has committed to.”

Fahnbulleh is a radical economist who led the New Economics Foundation from 2017 to 2023, a thinktank that pioneered "Green new deal" policies. Her academic background includes a PhD in economic development from the London School of Economics, equipping her to challenge industry claims that expanded fossil fuel extraction guarantees domestic energy resilience.

Environmental groups expect her to block the developments. “She must hold the line against harmful fossil fuel expansion – including the highly contentious Jackdaw and Rosebank fields – make cheap, clean energy available to all and build on Ed Miliband’s efforts to scale up our renewable power capacity,” said Imogen Dow, energy lead for Friends of the Earth.

The new secretary faces competing political pressures. She must navigate rightwing accusations of being a net zero zealot while managing lobbying from parts of her own party and some trade unions to permit new North Sea drilling.

Fahnbulleh, who fled Liberia as a child, is known for a blunt political style. She was the first minister to resign after Labour’s poor local election results in May, telling Keir Starmer: “We have not acted with the vision, pace and ambition our mandate for change demands of us.” Laura Clarke, CEO of ClientEarth, summed up her appointment: “She has real expertise in both energy and the economics of it. And she absolutely understands the economic imperative of transitioning to a green economy as well as the energy security and social imperatives.”