4 min read
Opposition to the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) has reached a new level of intensity. Business leaders, trade unions, charities, and local communities in the North East of Scotland are warning of a deepening crisis as the policy accelerates job losses, drains investment, and chips away at the economic foundations of the UK’s energy capital.
Despite this - and despite evidence that the levy is fuelling redundancies and pushing companies to downsize or relocate - the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, declined to amend the EPL in her recent Budget. For many in the sector, this decision was more than a disappointment; it was a moment of reckoning. It signalled that months of warnings, briefings and public appeals had failed to shift the political dial.
It also exposed a deeper problem: the campaign against the EPL, dominated by figures, forecasts and macroeconomic reasoning, has not cut through. The argument has remained technical, transactional and strangely bloodless – a debate conducted in spreadsheets rather than in the real world.
A brief explainer: what the EPL actually is
Introduced in 2022 as a so-called “windfall tax,” the levy imposes a headline tax rate of 78% on North Sea oil and gas profits - a level unmatched anywhere else in Europe. Originally framed as a temporary measure responding to global price shocks, the levy has remained in place for more than three years.
Within the sector it is loathed for deterring investment, accelerating job losses and pushing the UK towards imported energy with a higher carbon footprint.
As Professor Paul de Leeuw, director of RGU’s Energy Transition Unit has noted: “There is no windfall to tax anymore. It’s a very illogical thing.” Meanwhile, business bodies warn that more than 1,000 jobs a month could be lost if the levy remains unchanged until 2030.
Yet despite this, the campaign to reform or remove the EPL hasn’t generated the national resonance or urgency required. That’s because, while the numbers are compelling, they are not moving.
"There is no windfall to tax anymore. It’s a very illogical thing."
Why the human story matters
Josef Stalin, a man responsible for abhorrent suffering, once said: “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The sentiment - however grotesquely delivered – reveals something profound about human psychology: numbers numb us.
When the EPL is described exclusively through percentages, tax receipts and forecasts, its human stakes become blunted. The lived experience behind the statistics - fear, instability, loss, anger - fades into the background.
The reality is far sharper: families wondering whether they must move overseas to find work; people calculating how long redundancy packages will keep them afloat; communities fearing the erosion of the skilled workforce required for the UK’s transition to cleaner energy.
When people speak, hearts shift
We saw the power of human storytelling in May, when Harbour Energy workers, unions, charities and community leaders gathered in Aberdeen for an emergency press conference. It was here that Harbour employee Kerry Smyth spoke with emotional clarity about the 600 job losses her colleagues had endured.
“It’s been a really hard week… 600 at one company - that’s 600 livelihoods, mortgages and families.”
These were not statistics; they were people. And in that moment, the public saw the EPL not as an abstract fiscal tool, but as a force destabilising homes, futures and communities.
Charity leaders such as Donna Hutchison of Aberdeen Cyrenians warned of rising child poverty, addiction, domestic violence and near-term increases in homelessness. As one put it: “This is not just numbers on a spreadsheet…we need to remember the humanity in this.”
We also saw the power of human storytelling in the Serica Energy-produced film A Town Called Bruce, which laid bare the fears of workers on the Bruce platform that Government policy was making future investment financially impossible.
These are the voices that can change perceptions. But they have been deployed too rarely.
Lessons from beyond the North Sea
Across public affairs, journalism and campaigning, the same lesson repeats: emotion moves people; data reassures them. Two examples from beyond the EPL debate help illustrate this.
During the 2015 closure of Redcar steelworks on Teesside, it wasn’t production statistics that captured national attention – it was the stories of steelworkers like Paul Warren, who spoke about losing not just a job but a generational identity. His interviews catalysed cross-party political pressure in a way economic arguments alone never had.
Similarly, after the 2018 California wildfires, it was not acreage burned that unlocked federal support. It was the story of 70-year-old Ed Bledsoe, desperately trying to reach his grandchildren as flames closed in. His agony reframed the crisis from an environmental trend into a human emergency.
These examples show that when people hear from those directly affected, they don’t just absorb information – they feel compelled to act. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof puts it, stories should aim to “generate a response rather than a turned page”.
The science behind why stories work
Behavioural science confirms this. Neuroscience shows that stories activate emotional and sensory regions of the brain, while statistics stimulate only analytical processing.
Research from the European Journalism Observatory demonstrates that personalised stories with human imagery elicit stronger emotional engagement and higher motivation to act than factual reporting alone.
The takeaway is that data does not lose its importance - but without emotional resonance, it loses its influence.
Why this matters for the EPL
Aberdeen’s stagnating housing market, empty shopfronts and shrinking supply chain are consequences that cannot be conveyed through numbers alone. Nor can the anxiety of young engineers questioning whether they have a future in the energy sector, or the worry of parents wondering how they will stay afloat.
To persuade the public - and ultimately policymakers - that the EPL is undermining the very transition it claims to support, the sector must centre its real human stories.
A call to action: put people back at the centre
For leaders, communicators and campaigners across energy and renewables, the lesson is clear:
- Lead with human stories, supported by, not eclipsed by, data.
- Let real people narrate the impact, not spreadsheets.
- Use emotion responsibly, grounded in evidence, never distortion.
- Show what’s at stake for communities, not just for balance sheets.
- Champion fairness, recognising that a just transition must protect people as well as the planet.
The EPL debate has become a battle of statistics. It is time to rebalance the conversation. Facts inform. Stories persuade. And persuasion is now urgently needed.
