Everybody wants to reduce our reliance on imported oil and gas, but new North Sea licences that will take decades to deliver will do nothing to reduce costs to us.

We can do better and provide levelling-up opportunities far more effectively by investing in the green economy with its vast potential.

Gigafactories and solar panel manufacturing can be sited almost anywhere. There are geothermal energy opportunities around the country and even abandoned mines can be used to provide cheap district heating.

The sun rising behind a redundant oil platform moored in the Firth of Forth near Kirkcaldy, Fife. PIC: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

A newly developed system for storing energy, increasingly important as we scale out our renewable power supply, can be placed at over 6,000 sites across the UK.

By using pumped hydro-power with a high density liquid, you don’t need mountains or to flood valleys and the tanks can even be buried underground.

There are abundant research and development opportunities and apprenticeships for our best talents. Everywhere will need skilled engineers and retro-fitters to improve the efficiency of our homes and workplaces.

All this needs investment and it is not being encouraged. One potential inward investor is planning to go elsewhere if he does not see an end to the current “click bait politics” around our necessary transition away from fossil fuels.

The government’s own Net Zero review came to the same conclusion, but we are now running scared of progress. Why? It is to appeal to people who have become far too conservative (with a small c) in their thinking.

Where has levelling-up gone? Where is our ambition for the green economy? We can make progress on two fronts at once and are failing to do either.

North Sea oil and gas licences will do little to reduce costs for us - Yorkshire Post Letters