On the 21 October the government announced consent for the Jackdaw gas field following a long process of appeal and consideration from successive governments, writes Tom Bray. The field, about 250 km east of east of Aberdeen at its peak will provide up to 6% of UK gas production or about 2% of UK gas demand, and have a lifespan of about 11 years.

Alongside the announcement, the government announced a new wealth fund based on income from oil and gas fields that would commit £2billion to ‘invest in renewable and low carbon energy projects and support the green transition’.

Overall, I understand the reasons why the field has been consented, but it is still disappointing to hear, it feels like a step back from a low emissions future.

On the same day as the announcement, at my home in Durham, we switched on a piece of low carbon technology that would help reduce the need for new gas fields in the future. A battery.

Often, batteries are installed alongside solar panels to capture electricity generated locally, minimising the amount of electricity households need to purchase from the grid.

But if we just use batteries like this, we miss a big opportunity they provide. For the electricity grid, our CO2 emissions and our back pocket.

We don’t have solar panels, but are using a battery anyway to reduce costs and support a clean electricity system.

Buy when the wind blows

We can use batteries to buy electricity when the wind blows, or sun shines, or when demand is low, before using electricity during still and dark weather or electricity demand is particularly high. With a time of use tariff this can mean we can take advantage of low cost electricity to give us a discounted electricity supply. And low cost electricity tends to be the lower emissions electricity too.

The battery we are using is only small, with 2.5 kWh of capacity. I have thought about the theory of using batteries for months if not years, but only as I turned it on did I start to really understand. Immediately, looking at data from my energy supplier, I could see my live usage dropped to zero. “Oh wow” I thought. I was taking energy from this box, to power my home, rather than drawing from the grid.

I then set a schedule to charge at times of lower costs, and discharge during high rates. “This is cool” I whispered to myself. “I wish I had a bigger capacity”.

I am on a novel, smart tariff from Octopus energy (agile), that varies in cost every half hour, when the wind blows, costs can go very low, but every day there is a 3 hour period where costs are higher which tends to be when demand is highest. I can buy low, use high. Allowing a 2.5 kWh battery to charge up low, and use high, could give me savings of around 50p per day, some days more, some days less. Reducing costs by potentially £180 per year without really thinking about it. This isn’t going to transform my finances, but every little helps.

On top of that saving, the battery, in following price signals, is following the lowest emissions electricity too. Helping take advantage of wind power, avoiding gas at the peaks. We don’t even have solar panels that we want to capture generation from but a battery is helping us reduce emissions.

So why is this relevant when talking about the Jackdaw gas field?

Well I think it is relevant because oil and gas, increasingly, is an option we choose to take. We can choose how we consume energy, we have options that aren’t fossil fuels. In our electricity system we use gas at peak demand, or when we can’t get energy from wind and solar to where it is needed due to grid contraints, or when wind and solar output is low. The variability is difficult to deal with, and gas is the get out of jail free card.

But batteries can play part of that role, helping us reduce demand at the peaks (so we need less gas), helping us use energy locally, reducing the need for grid upgrades, and (eventually) reducing curtailment of wind power (so we need less gas backup) and helping us take advantage of sunny and windy weather for night-time or when still times come along (so we need less gas).

Battery storage, is one of the tools, one of the keys, to a lower cost and lower emissions electricity system.

Government says we have licensed Jackdaw so we can secure jobs, increase tax income to the exchequer, and reduce, slightly, imported gas. The long term answer to energy security, to lower cost energy, and taking our environmental obligations seriously, will be to need less gas overall.

So I am interested in what the new wealth fund will invest in. A policy announcement that would subsidise battery storage, could mean we install more batteries, which could mean reduce the need for gas in our electricity system. An announcement that accelerated the approvals for ‘plug in batteries’, ones installed through a 3 pin plug, rather than with professional installation, could make battery storage affordable for many more, helping reduce the need for gas. Promoting smart meters and time of use tariffs to incentivise shift away from peak demand, away from still and dark times, and towards low demand, bright and windy times, would mean we need less gas.

We could go on about policies to accelerate heat pump installation, education about boiler efficiency, or encouraging electrification of heat in other ways, and their impact on reducing gas. But that’s for another article.

In Australia, since summer 2025 the cheaper home batteries program has helped Australian households install 420,000 home batteries, a capacity of 12 GWh of overall stored capacity. These batteries have helped reduce gas demand by 34% year on year (for the July-September quarter). The lowest gas demand for electricity in over 25 years. There are other things going on in Australia that supports this, but this policy is an example our government could follow. If batteries in the UK where a fifth as impactful as those installed in Australia over the last year, we would avoid the need for gas from Jackdaw altogether, or displace a significant amount of gas imported from elsewhere.

The policy in Australia costs $7.2 billion Australian dollars over 4 years, equivalent to ~£3.8 billion, I think I have a suggestion what that £2billion in a new wealth fund could be spent on…

So, I sigh when I hear the news about Jackdaw, this doesn’t seem to resonate with a low carbon future. And, it makes me think of all the ways we could reduce gas use so that Jackdaw was never needed. Maybe batteries can be one of them.

* Tom is an engineer and environmentalist, working with individuals and organisations on responding to climate change at sb-energy.co.uk, and communicating about the energy transition on Youtube with this channel called Low Carbon Lifestyle.

* This article is an extract from The Northern Eco weekly newsletter which drops into the in boxes of subscribers each Tuesday – and you can have it too!