The UK government is currently evaluating whether to approve a license for the Jackdaw gasfield, located around 250 kilometers east of Aberdeen in the North Sea. Proponents argue that domestic gas production could help address energy security concerns, as the government has suggested that producing gas within the UK is preferable to importing it. However, opponents claim that new gas production contradicts the UK’s climate goals, as the atmosphere does not differentiate between carbon dioxide emissions from North Sea gas and those from imported gas. The UK currently relies heavily on gas for heating, electricity, and industry. There are, however, ways to reduce gas use, such as improving insulation, using heat pumps, and adopting geothermal energy or electrification. For instance, minewater heating systems in old coal mines, like those in Seaham in northeast England, have been used to heat homes by tapping into the warmth of water from abandoned mines. The debate over the Jackdaw gasfield has been ongoing since 2021, when the Offshore Petroleum Regulator rejected Shell’s environmental statement for the project, which coincided with the UN climate summit in Glasgow. The invasion of Ukraine and its impact on European gas prices have since increased pressure to develop new oil and gas fields. While the UK government might welcome additional revenue, the scale of production and earnings seen in the 1980s are unlikely. One argument in favor of Jackdaw is that it could provide short-term resilience while Britain reduces its reliance on gas. However, emissions from Jackdaw are considered incompatible with the UK’s climate objectives. The UK’s industrial history could play a key role in its future beyond fossil fuels. The nation’s electricity system has shown it can change rapidly, as seen with the phase-out of coal in 2025. Seasonal energy storage is as important now as it was in the past, and Britain’s fossil fuel system relied heavily on storage. A renewable energy system will also need storage, though batteries can balance electricity over hours and days but not yet over seasons, as coal, oil, and gas once did. Britain has a unique strategic advantage in that it has already built much of the offshore infrastructure and developed the geological, engineering, and technical expertise needed for large-scale energy storage. The North and Irish Seas contain depleted oil and gas fields that could become huge stores of low-carbon energy. Surplus renewable electricity can be converted into low-carbon fuels like hydrogen and stored underground for months before being used when energy demand is high. The key question is no longer how much more fossil fuel can be extracted from the North Sea, but how the geology, infrastructure, and engineering expertise created by the oil and gas industry can be repurposed for a low-carbon and energy-secure system. The UK could use these structures to store energy from renewable sources, creating new skilled and future-proof jobs for oil workers and enhancing energy security for the UK and Europe.