Rishi Sunak has claimed the aircraft are the ‘most efficient use of my time’ (Picture: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street / PA)

Rishi Sunak has once again defended flying by private jet only hours after announcing hundreds of North Sea oil and gas licences.

The prime minister has long faced heated criticism for flying by private plane up and down the UK, with critics noting sustainable travel was often an option.

Among the journeys, Sunak has flown by helicopter to Dover (there was an hour-long train) and once took three private jets in only 10 days, including one from London to Blackpool.

Private jets have a disproportionate impact on the environment, guzzling more fuel than a commercial plane and are up to 14 times more polluting.

But in an awkward and heated interview with the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland today, Sunak said he will fly today to Scotland to announce funding for a carbon capture and storage project.

‘I’ll be flying as I normally would and that’s the most efficient use of my time,’ he said.

Sunak has faced repeated criticism for taking private jets for local flights (Picture: AP)

The Tory leader suggested that those criticising him for taking a private jet amid the worsening climate crisis want to ban ‘holidays’.

‘If you or others think that the answer to climate change is getting people to ban everything that they are doing, to stop people going on holiday, I mean, I think that’s absolutely the wrong approach,’ he said.

Sunak flew by private plane this afternoon to St Fergus, a village just north of Peterhead where the North Sea carbon capture scheme, known as Acorn, will be unveiled.

While some of Sunak’s private jet trips are at the taxpayer’s expense, Tory donors are also known to foot the bill.

Sunak insisted that getting to St Fergus by plane is what prime ministers before him have long done, given how ‘efficient’, he again said, it is.

‘But if your approach to climate change is to say no one should go on a holiday, no one should [go on] a plane, I think you are completely and utterly wrong,’ Sunak added, ‘that is absolutely not the approach to tackling climate change.

‘What we are doing is investing in sustainable aviation fuel, as one of the new technologies like carbon capture and storage will help us make the transition.’

Sunak said he was to make the trip to Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, to visit the St Fergus Gas Plant by private plane (Picture: PA)

Earlier today, Sunak confirmed that hundreds of new oil and gas licences will be granted in the UK, insisting that the nation needs fossil fuels.

‘Even when we reach net zero in 2050 a quarter of our energy needs will still come from oil and gas,’ he said, with the goal being enshrined in law.

About six in 10 Brits say that they are worried about climate change, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The Conservatives have increasingly called into question some of Britain’s emission-reducing targets while squaring off against green policies such as low-emission zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods.

The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, said the UK ‘has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action’.

Private planes are about 14 times more polluting per passenger than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to a report by the European clean transport campaign organisation Transport & Environment.

The latest moves by the Conservative government have rankled environmental groups such as Just Stop Oil (Picture: AFP)

In just one hour, a single private jet can emit two tonnes of CO2. An average journey in one is about the same planet-warming fumes as driving a petrol car about 860 miles from Paris to Rome 16 times (the UK is about 800 miles long).

While the average person produces about seven metric tonnes of CO2 annually.

Overall, Greenpeace found in March that emissions from private jets have soared in Europe, emitting a total of 5,300,000 tonnes of CO2 in the last three years.

This is slightly more than what Uganda, a country of some 46,00,000, produces in a year.

Oliver Sidorczuk, co-director of Zero Hour, the cross-party campaign for the sprawling Climate & Ecology Bill, said Britain’s environment policy is ‘weak’ at best even as climate change deepens.

Following the hottest summer on record, the UK Government should be powering towards a zero carbon, nature positive future – not giving permission for new oil, gas, and coal developments,’ he said.

Sunak must unite with other world leaders to deliver a ‘people-powered plan to reverse’s nature’s decline’ and ease swelling fuel bills and create green jobs in the process.

‘This should be Rishi Sunak’s top priority,’ Sidorczuk added, ‘and perhaps something for him to think about during his next helicopter or private jet trip.’

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‘I’ll be flying as I normally would.’