A lengthy court battle on natural gas fracking that had a seismic impact on UK fossil fuel development has won Sarah Finch one of this year\u2019s Goldman Environmental Prizes.<\/p>\n
Finch spearheaded the legal fight that led to a 2024 Supreme Court of the United Kingdom judgment ordering extraction to cease, on the basis that the permitting process ignored downstream climate impacts.<\/p>\n
The judgment in Finch vs. Surrey County Council shuttered a small fracking operation in southeastern England. It also turned back three major fossil fuel development projects and led the UK government to issue new guidance for the permitting of offshore natural gas projects.<\/p>\n
The Goldman Prize<\/a>, awarded annually by the Goldman Environmental Foundation in conjunction with Earth Day, showcases the work of grassroots environmental activists from around the world. Finch is one of six winners<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n \u2018You Only Care About What You Know\u2019<\/p>\n Finch\u2019s legal battle to shut down four fracking wells near her rural home in southeast England\u2019s Weald district began in 2020 when Finch, on behalf of the Weald Action Group (WAG) and supported by Friends of the Earth,<\/a> asked a local High Court to overturn a county council-issued permit allowing \u00a0\u00a0Hill Development Ltd. to proceed beyond exploratory drilling into full-bore extraction for at least 20 years.<\/p>\n The legal plea followed years of grassroots resistance by WAG, a loose consortium of neighbourhood groups opposed to fracking in the Weald. While the region had hosted small amounts of conventional oil and gas drilling for decades\u2014it sits atop an estimated 4.4-billion-barrel shale oil reserve\u2014extractive efforts accelerated in the second half of the decade in tandem with advances in fracking technology.<\/p>\n Fracking should not proceed at Horse Hill Road, Finch argued, because the project\u2019s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had failed to include the emissions that would be generated when the extracted shale oil was burned.<\/p>\n While the company\u2019s EIA assessed its lifetime operational emissions at around 114,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), it was silent on end use emissions that would clock in at more than 10 million tonnes.<\/p>\n The High Court rejected Finch\u2019s suit, as did the Court of Appeal in November 2021.<\/p>\n In June 2024, however, the UK Supreme Court ruled 3-2 in Finch\u2019s favour. The Surrey Country Council\u2019s decision to issue Horse Hill Developments Ltd. (HHDL) a permit was \u201cunlawful because the emissions that will occur when the oil produced is burnt as fuel are within the scope of the EIA required by law,\u201d the court wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important to note that this decision does not prohibit a competent authority from granting consent to a project with significant emissions or environmental harm,\u201d wrote<\/a> the global finance firm KPMG in its analysis of the landmark judgement. What the decision did emphasize, however, is \u201cthe importance of EIAs in providing the public and the local planning authority with full and complete information about the potential impacts of a project.\u201d<\/p>\n KPMG highlighted key words from the judgment saying, \u201cYou can only care about what you know about.\u201d Those words ring on in her mind, Finch told The Energy Mix in an interview.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Not the Making of the Cake That Matters<\/p>\n Those opposed to her suit insisted the Horse Hill fracking operation involved nothing more than \u201cgetting the oil out of the ground, out the gate, and onto a tanker\u201d, and that downstream emissions could not be considered the extractor\u2019s responsibility, Finch told The Mix.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, the burning of the oil is an inevitable impact of extraction,\u201d she said, recalling her own and her legal team\u2019s repeated rejoinder.<\/p>\n Finch said she often used the analogy of making versus eating a chocolate cake: \u201cIf you look at the impact of a chocolate cake on your diet, it\u2019s not when you make it that affects you, it\u2019s when you eat it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo us, that was a common sense argument, and it was very frustrating in the earlier courts to hear all these lawyers, highly paid lawyers, arguing that emissions could not be connected to extraction,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so validating to hear the Supreme Court read out its ruling, which was exactly what we\u2019d said all along for five years and was self-evidently obvious.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The impacts of the Finch ruling have extended far beyond a narrow country road in southeast England.<\/p>\n In September 2024, a High Court judge used it to overturn a permit for a controversial coal mine<\/a> in northwest England that would have extracted 2.8 million tonnes of coal per year until 2050\u2014generating the equivalent of roughly 220 million tonnes of carbon dioxide along the way.<\/p>\n Then in January 2025, another High Court judge ordered the Finch ruling to be \u201capplied retrospectively<\/a>\u201d to overturn two major offshore oil and gas projects<\/a>\u2014the Rosebank field 80 kilometres northeast of the Shetland Islands, and the Jackdaw field 275 kilometres due east of Aberdeen.<\/p>\n Six months later, in June, the UK government issued new guidance to offshore oil and gas developers requiring that drilling applications contain credible assessments of all downstream emissions that would result from any proposed extraction.<\/p>\n \u2018Canada Has Some Serious Catching Up to Do\u2019<\/p>\n Where the UK government now directs oil and gas developers to be up front about Scope 3 emissions, Canada is, quite literally, urging them not to bother, said Nathalie Chalifour, a law professor with the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n The Strategic Assessment of Climate Change under the Impact Assessment Act\u00a0 \u201cexplicitly states<\/a> that proponents of projects undergoing a federal impact assessment are not required to provide an estimate of the project\u2019s downstream GHG emissions,\u201d Chalifour told the Mix in an email.<\/p>\n And things have only gotten worse<\/a> with the passage of the Building Canada Act, which sharply reduces oversight <\/a>under the Impact Assessment Act.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if the IAA required scrutiny of downstream emissions (which it does not), projects falling within the BCA would be exempt,\u201d Chalifour wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in a time when decision-makers should be more (not less) informed and more deliberate and thoughtful (not less) about decisions relating to large projects that could generate significant downstream GHG emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCanada has some serious catching up to do,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Will Starmer Keep Holding the Line?<\/p>\n Contained in a late November 2025 regulatory review<\/a> of the UK\u2019s nuclear industry is a recommendation to \u201coverturn the Finch judgment for low-carbon infrastructure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n