While the UK needs to accelerate its energy transition, targets are being missed, projects run into delays, and the public wonders why progress feels so slow. The temptation is to blame politics, funding or technology. Yet there is a deeper reason the road to net zero keeps stalling.
Everything in our modern life, from our roads to our factories, have been built around readily available fossil fuels. As a result, we expect things to happen quickly, to last indefinitely and to disappear without consequence.
Why this expectation? Burning coal, oil and gas taps carbon and sunlight that were locked away over millions of years and releases that energy in a matter of decades. That compression of deep time (the vast geological timescales of Earth’s history) into human time gives the impression that highways, buildings and plastics can be produced at speed and endure without limits. Through burning fossil fuels, millions of years worth of stored sunlight and energy can be transformed into concrete, plastics and electricity in a matter of hours.
When we talk about decarbonisation, we are not just changing fuels. We are being asked to change this entire pace of living.
Fossil fuels made energy cheap and abundant, and so our economies were organised around speed. We learned to pour concrete and we assumed it would stand for decades. We built factories that ran day and night and supply chains that delivered instantly. Convenience became normal.
In this context, it makes sense that governments promise to “accelerate” the green transition. The problem is that the very systems we are trying to fix still run on the rhythms of the fossil era. They are not designed to slow down or pivot quickly.
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The North Sea’s recent “tieback” oil licences help show what is really happening.
The UK government’s new North Sea strategy is a case in point. The introduction of “transitional energy certificates” or “tiebacks” allow new drilling on or near existing fields. So while the UK has committed to banning all new oil and gas licences, some new fossil fuel extraction is still permitted.
Instead of marking a clean break from fossil fuels, they extend existing infrastructure by linking smaller oil fields to older platforms. This approach is faster and cheaper than starting new projects. On the surface, it looks like progress. But it keeps the old system going rather than rethinking it.
This logic shows up in how we build, too. Concrete is a telling example. In 2025 the UK announced its first carbon capture retrofit for a cement plant in Padeswood, North Wales. This so-called “net zero” cement factory will trap around 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year and start producing low-carbon cement in 2029.
This is a major technical step forward. Yet the retrofit does not change how cement is made.