It can be a tricky balancing act, making sure that the needs of local communities, the demands of a working port, environmental responsibilities and the investment needed to keep our ports fit for the future are all being considered.
And there is no easy formula.
Vessel sizes are increasing, weather patterns are becoming more erratic and dangerous, patterns of trade are changing, geopolitical tensions cast shadows over future decisions, and all of this is putting pressure on ports and harbours that were often built for very different requirements.
So, before deciding how to invest for the future, we need to understand the port we already have, the condition and capability of its infrastructure, the operational constraints and the opportunities for change.
The challenge facing UK port infrastructure is therefore not simply about building more. It is about understanding what we already have, what we need it to do, and where investment can make the greatest difference.
The thing is, what happens at a port can have a significant effect on the town or city around it. Increasingly, those wider consequences need to form part of the conversation.
Port expansion considerations
The cruise industry is a good example.
For a seaside town or historic harbour, attracting cruise vessels can bring thousands of visitors into the local economy. Passengers walk through the town, eat in cafés and restaurants, visit attractions, buy souvenirs, take taxis, book excursions and spend money in local businesses. For places that have struggled with declining footfall or limited investment, that influx can bring a welcome sense of energy as well as direct economic benefit.
But bringing a cruise ship into harbour does not, by itself, create a successful visitor destination.
People need a reason to get off the ship and stay in the town.
That might be a historic harbour, a castle or other heritage attraction. It might be dramatic scenery, coastal walks, galleries, independent shops, good cafés and restaurants, or simply a town that feels cared for and interesting to explore.
And that raises another part of the investment question. If a community wants to benefit from increased visitor numbers, some investment may be needed beyond the port itself. Streets, public spaces, signage, transport links, visitor facilities and local businesses all contribute to the experience.
There is little value in increasing the capacity of a maritime destination if the destination itself is not ready to make the most of the people arriving there.
Equally, simply bringing more visitors to a town that is suffering from years of underinvestment isn’t going to fix the problem. A tired high street is usually a symptom of wider economic and social issues.
Balancing competing interests
This is where the range of stakeholders becomes important.
The port operator is thinking about vessel movements, safety, operational resilience and the practical realities of running a working port.
Developers and investors need a commercially viable proposition. Planners and environmental specialists have their own requirements to consider. Local businesses may see the potential for more customers and employment. While residents may welcome that economic activity, they may have legitimate concerns about traffic, congestion, noise, visual impact or changes to the character of their town.
Politicians have to weigh those competing interests alongside the longer-term economic needs of the area and the public investment available.
Those views rarely align easily. That doesn’t mean consultation should become endless, but it does mean that the right questions need to be asked of the right people.
Good consultation should improve the decision, not simply create a paper trail showing that consultation took place.
And that means listening to people who understand the place from very different perspectives.
Ardersier: balancing growth and environmental impact
Ardersier, a small former fishing village in the Scottish Highlands on the Moray Firth, is a good example of what this can look like in practice. The former fabrication yard covers around 450 acres and is being redeveloped as an energy transition facility, with deep-water access and substantial new quayside infrastructure. The economic case is significant, but so are the environmental and community considerations.
There is a strong economic argument for that kind of investment. Offshore wind needs ports with the land, water depth, quayside strength and space to handle very large components. UK port infrastructure already presents a recognised constraint on the growth of the sector.
But we shouldn’t describe a development simply as “brownfield regeneration” and move on.
The wider development area includes agricultural land, residential properties due for demolition and a substantial area of mature Scots pine plantation. The planning assessment also identifies wet heathland, grassland, birch woodland and other habitats within the extension area.
Local concerns have therefore been about much more than whether people support offshore wind.
Community councils raised very valid concerns about biodiversity loss. These include the scale of land raising, visual impact, traffic, noise, water supplies, landscape and tourism. Not to forget the potential impact of large structures on Inverness Airport and MOD interests and the movement of turbines into the Moray Firth.
We shouldn’t simply dismiss those concerns because the wider objective is renewable energy.
The larger picture
At the same time, we shouldn’t dismiss the wider economic and energy case because the development has an environmental impact.
That is the difficult bit.
Planning assessments identify mitigation and enhancement measures including wetland creation, habitat improvements, native planting and woodland enhancement. The development also includes compensatory planting for the loss of commercial forestry. Ardersier supports protected species including red squirrels, pine martens, bats and otters, so the environmental considerations are very real and have to shape how the development proceeds.
For me, this is where the quality of the decision-making matters.
We need to consider the case for offshore wind infrastructure if we are serious about changing how we generate energy. We also need to protect biodiversity, respect communities and understand the environmental cost of the infrastructure that makes that transition possible.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive, but neither can we wave one away in favour of another.
Ardersier is therefore a useful example, not because it provides a simple answer, but because it demonstrates how complicated getting to the answer can be.
The bigger energy question
There is also a wider question about what we want our ports and industrial infrastructure to support.
The UK needs to reduce emissions – we all do – but we also need affordable, reliable energy, investment and well-paid employment. The UK currently accounts for around 0.8% of global CO₂ emissions, so the answer cannot simply be to decarbonise faster than everyone else regardless of the economic consequences.
Renewables will be an important part of that future, but so will other technologies. Nuclear fission is already capable of providing reliable, low-carbon power. Fusion is the longer-term prospect, with the potential to transform how we generate energy, and is already an area in which the UK is investing heavily.
The North Sea Oil dilemma
There is also a legitimate question about how we use the North Sea’s remaining oil and gas resources during the transition. It is easy to assume that because we produce oil in the North Sea, we could simply use more of it here and reduce our dependence on imports. The reality is more complicated.
The UK exports nearly 90% of its crude oil production, while our refineries import significant quantities of crude from elsewhere. That sounds contradictory until you look at what our refineries actually need. Domestic North Sea crude has a different chemical composition from some of the crude now favoured by UK refineries. This means refinery operators increasingly import lighter, sweeter crude, particularly from the US and Norway. Factors including crude quality, market prices and refinery economics are what drive these commercial decisions.
In 2025, the US and Norway together supplied 57% of the UK’s crude oil imports, with Algeria, Libya and Nigeria providing a further 21%. At the same time, declining domestic refining capacity means we are becoming more reliant on imported refined fuels such as diesel and petrol. The Netherlands is particularly important here, acting as a major refining and oil-trading hub and accounting for 24% of UK petroleum-product imports in 2025.
Geo-Political tensions
Our energy supply has also changed significantly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before the invasion, Russia supplied around a fifth of UK road-diesel demand. Direct imports of Russian oil and oil products were subsequently banned, and UK supply chains shifted towards other sources. By 2025, the Netherlands and the US together supplied 58% of the UK’s white-diesel imports.
This is where geopolitics becomes part of the energy question. The UK buys oil and gas through international markets, which means we don’t have to be buying directly from a country at war for conflict to affect what we pay. Disruption to production, shipping routes or major supply corridors can tighten global markets and push wholesale prices higher. The current conflict in the Middle East is contributing to higher UK wholesale gas prices, according to Ofgem. At the same time, the UK increasingly relies on imports of refined fuels such as petrol and diesel as domestic refining capacity declines.
So energy security is not simply a question of whether we have oil and gas beneath the North Sea. It is about the whole system: what we can produce, what our refineries can use, what we need to import, where it comes from, and how resilient those supply chains are. That makes the infrastructure supporting our energy system every bit as important as the resources themselves.
Tackling the global investment challenges
There is little benefit in becoming a net-zero success story on paper if the result is higher costs, weaker industry and investment moving elsewhere.
The challenge is to build an energy system as well as the ports, yards and supply chains that support it, that allows the UK to decarbonise without making itself poorer.
Aberdeen: when expansion is necessary
Aberdeen presents a different set of circumstances.
It was already operating close to capacity while the requirements placed on it were changing. Larger vessels, the energy sector, cruise and emerging offshore industries were creating demand for additional deep-water and operational space.
In that situation, expansion wasn’t simply about improving existing facilities. The port needed significant new infrastructure.
South Harbour has increased the port’s capacity and strengthened its ability to support offshore energy activity. At the same time, the wider harbour strategy considers how existing land and facilities can work alongside the new development and contribute to the city’s future economic transition.
Aberdeen also illustrates something important about major port investment: the harbour is closely connected to the city’s economy, transport network, employment and plans for regeneration and new industries. The engineering decision to expand therefore sits within a much bigger economic and spatial decision about what Aberdeen needs its waterfront to do over the coming decades.
What comes next?
We can apply no single, universal model from one port or harbour to another.
A major commercial port, a former industrial site, a small island ferry terminal and a historic seaside harbour may all face very different constraints and opportunities.
What they do share is the need to make decisions based on the reality of the place.
That means understanding the infrastructure and its capability, but also understanding the operational requirement, the economics, the environment and the people affected by the decision.
It means listening as much, if not more, than speaking.
It also means recognising that investment in one part of the system can depend on investment somewhere else. New cruise berths may create an opportunity for local businesses, but the town needs to offer visitors something worth experiencing. A new offshore energy facility may create significant employment, but the surrounding area needs housing, transport and services capable of supporting that growth. A new quay may increase capacity, but the wider port still needs to operate efficiently around it.
We also need to take the environmental impacts seriously, and not simply give them a nod, tick a box and then move on to the next agenda.
The pressure on UK port infrastructure is unlikely to diminish. Larger vessels, offshore energy, changing cargo requirements, decarbonisation and new patterns of trade are all changing what ports need to provide.
At the same time, many of the places in which those ports sit have their own challenges and ambitions.
Looking to the future
That makes the next phase of port development about more than building bigger or newer infrastructure. It is about understanding what the port needs to achieve, what the surrounding place needs from it, and where investment can make the greatest difference.
Sometimes that will mean major expansion, as it has in Aberdeen. Sometimes it will mean adapting an established industrial site, as we are seeing at Ardersier. Elsewhere, it may mean making carefully targeted improvements to infrastructure that is already doing an important job.
And it should always mean giving local communities a voice in decisions that affect where they live.
I’m a strong proponent of environmental protection, but I also think we need to be honest about the choices involved in the energy transition. If using an existing industrial site, or extending an established port into some greenfield land, allows us to build the infrastructure needed to reduce carbon emissions, that has to be part of the calculation too.
The answer isn’t to pretend there is no environmental cost. Nor is it to pretend that we can achieve a major change in how we generate energy without building anything.
The strongest decisions will be the ones that look at all of those things together.
Because ultimately, the future of a port connects closely to the future of the place around it. If we get the infrastructure, the investment, the environmental considerations and the wider planning right, we have an opportunity to create ports that support industry, bring economic activity into their communities and continue to serve those places for many years to come.