Two Numbers. One Choice.
The UK government is about to spend £44 billion decommissioning the North Sea. Taking apart platforms. Plugging wells. Removing pipelines. When it's done, there will be nothing left — no infrastructure, no industry, no jobs.
For £15 billion — roughly a third of that demolition budget — you could build one CFF site that produces clean energy, hydrogen, water, heating, and industrial outputs for 200 years.
One path destroys. The other builds. The numbers are real.
The Decommissioning Bill
The North Sea Transition Authority estimates the total cost of decommissioning the UK Continental Shelf at £44 billion (and rising). This covers:
- ~500 wells already overdue for plugging
- ~1,700 more wells scheduled for decommissioning
- ~300 platforms to be dismantled
- ~45,000 km of pipelines to be removed or made safe
- Environmental remediation of the seabed
This work is funded partly by the companies that operated the fields and partly by the UK taxpayer through tax relief. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the government's decommissioning tax relief alone could reach
£18–20 billion.
What £44 Billion Buys
- Temporary demolition jobs (5–15 years)
- An empty seabed
- No new energy supply
- No new industry
- A workforce made redundant
- £18B+ of taxpayer money spent on destruction
What £15 Billion Builds
One CFF site — the FOAK (First-Of-A-Kind) build — delivers:
- 3.6 GWe of clean electricity for 200 years
- 2,072 tonnes/day of green hydrogen
- 50,000 m³/day of desalinated water
- District heating at £500/yr to ~280,000 homes
- Oxygen, fertiliser feedstock, and chemical outputs
- ~18,000 permanent jobs (construction through to operations)
- Revenue that co-funds the next site through progressive self-funding
Three Sites for the Price of Demolition
At £15 billion per FOAK site, the £44 billion demolition budget could instead build nearly three CFF sites — even before fleet cost reductions kick in.
Three CFF sites would produce:
- 10.8 GWe of electricity
- 6,216 tonnes/day of hydrogen
- 150,000 m³/day of water
- District heating for ~840,000 homes
- ~54,000 permanent jobs
And the revenue from those three sites would fund the fourth, fifth, and sixth sites — creating a self-sustaining build programme that doesn't need continued government funding after the initial investment.
The Workforce Argument
The skills transfer from North Sea decommissioning to CFF is almost 1:1:
- Offshore construction → Coastal site construction
- Pipeline welding → Hydrogen pipeline infrastructure
- Platform maintenance → HTGR module maintenance
- Process engineering → Hydrogen & desalination operations
- Electrical & instrumentation → Power distribution & grid systems
These workers don't need retraining. They need a destination. CFF is that destination — offering
permanent careers for 200 years, not temporary demolition contracts.
The Political Question
No politician wants to vote for £44 billion of demolition. But equally, no politician has offered an alternative that uses those skills and that money constructively.
CFF is that alternative. Same budget. Same workers. But instead of tearing things down, you build something that powers the nation for two centuries.
The maths isn't complicated. The plan exists. What's missing is someone brave enough to look at both numbers and choose the right one.
Written by DJ Waugh, a retired engineer from the North East — a region that knows what it feels like when industries close and nothing replaces them.