Former top Just Stop Oil donor turns on green campaigners

Dale Vince criticises ongoing protests after group’s demands were won ‘at the ballot box’

The former Just Stop Oil (JSO) donor Dale Vince has criticised the group for becoming too extreme and said he does not support its push to end fossil extraction by 2030.
Mr Vince, who also gave £5m to Labour in the 12 months before the election, said that he backed the radical activist group when it was just attempting to prevent new drilling in the UK, but believes it has since gone too far.
However, he also criticised the long prison sentences handed to some campaigners, after a group was jailed for up to five years last month.
Mr Vince, who runs green energy provider Ecotricity, described the sentences as far too long. He added that he was “not a fan” of JSO’s new stance, or of its deployment of protesters trying to blockade airports.
It came as JSO announced on Wednesday that it was suspending all planned protests because of the riots across Britain.
Mr Vince said: “The aim has shifted from no new oil, because obviously Labour got elected on that platform, to ending the whole UK fossil fuel industry by 2030, and I don’t think that’s a sensible thing to ask for.
“I don’t think it’s a valid thing to make this kind of disruptive protest.
“I used to say, on the other side of the election … hopefully we just won’t need Just Stop Oil, because we’ll have stopped [new drilling for] oil through the ballot box by stopping the Tories.
“That was our campaign, just stop the Tories … there’s obviously no point disrupting now for no new licensing because that’s happening. We won that argument at the ballot box.”
Mr Vince is the founder and chief executive of Ecotricity, which supplies 100pc green electricity to 200,000 customers. In 2023 it declared a profit of £39m.
Mr Vince said setting a fixed date to abandon oil and gas was impractical because the UK was so far from being ready.
About 25m UK homes rely on gas boilers for heating and there are 32m petrol or diesel vehicles on the roads – with 30pc of UK electricity generated by gas-fired power stations.
Mr Vince said the UK had to move away from fossil fuels but the transition would take time.
He said: “There’s no point having an arbitrary cut-off for oil. We have to build like hell to the point that we just stop using it. That’s the logical thing to do.
“We’ve just got a Labor government with a massive majority, and a mandate for a green economy. And I’m surprised that there are protests going on within weeks of that, and that there’s a kind of ramping up of demands.
“I’m just surprised by that.”
Mr Vince said that he remained a staunch supporter of the right to protest – and attacked the sentences handed down to the JSO “Whole Truth Five”, as the group has become known.
Another 16 JSO protesters have also been jailed recently.
He called on Labour to change the laws and sentencing powers enshrined in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which allow protesters to be charged with “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” and given lengthy prison sentences simply for discussing future potential protests.
He said: “The right to protest seems to me to be fundamental, like the right to breathe air. It’s a way for people to call governments to account, policymakers and governments who are doing the wrong thing or aren’t listening.
“Back in the day the suffragettes were a pain in the a—. They took on the authorities with very direct, disruptive action but that’s how women got the vote.
“Similarly the ending of slavery was contentious in its time – the laws allowing slavery were challenged by activists who found themselves outside of moral norms and laws. But they were all right in the end.
“The Just Stop Oil protesters at the time [of the offence]  were spurred really, by the idea of halting drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea, which is something that the United Nations has called economic and moral madness.
“And we all know that we can’t be drilling for new oil and gas. We’ve got plenty in the world. We don’t need it.”