Renewables jobs needed amid North Sea oil and gas decline

The SNP government has insisted it is committed to ensuring there is a just transition from the fossil fuel era as it becomes increasingly clear it has done nothing worthwhile to secure one.

Energy minister Gillian Martin has portrayed herself as a workers’ champion in a speech in which she admitted the North East looked to be facing a bleak future unless the country moved faster to compensate for the decline of the North Sea oil industry.

Ms Martin told the SNP conference the area was “potentially and dangerously” on course to end up in a situation where a just transition would not happen, insisting she would not let that come about.

A report on her speech in The Independent noted that Ms Martin said her determination to ensure North Scotland was not left behind reflected the fact her family hailed from a town that was devastated by the decline of ship-building.

“I’ll be damned if that happens because the place that my mum and dad are from, in Clydebank, has never recovered and neither has many other places,” she declared, in a display of narcissism worthy of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Ms Martin’s comments do not provide much of a vote of confidence in the industrial policies followed by Ms Sturgeon or other SNP first ministers. The SNP has been in power at Holyrood since 2007 and has had plenty of time to help former ship-building communities to fight back.

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Ms Martin may hope her admission about the threat to the just transition will provide reassurance that the current administration is aware of the scale of the task it faces.

But her comments should not distract attention from the failure of successive SNP administrations to address a challenge they claimed they had been quicker to recognise than the UK Government.

The £500m just transition fund initiative for the North East and Moray launched by Ms Sturgeon in 2021 has turned into a fiasco.

Awards were suspended after the first two years, as a report by MSPs raised serious questions about the point of the fund.

Research commissioned by the SNP Government found the fund had helped to create just 110 jobs in the first two years and supported 120 others.

After the fund was reopened to applications this year, first minister John Swinney hailed the decision to award £8.5m to four projects he claimed had a clear goal of supporting jobs and maximising economic opportunities for the North East.

“Just Transition funding aims to ensure no one is left behind and that communities continue to play a vital role in the country's clean energy future,” he claimed.

Friends of the Earth Scotland welcomed the awards but lamented the fact the SNP Government has kept people waiting years for the publication of the revised just transition strategy which it promised. The Government has yet to publish the final version of the energy strategy it issued in draft form in January 2023 following long delays.

Asked last week when the revised strategies would be published, a Scottish Government spokesperson indicated the wait could drag on some time yet.

“The judgements and issues in the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan are informed and influenced by ongoing developments in the UK Government’s energy policy and recent court decisions,” said the spokesperson.

“We are taking sufficient time to analyse and reflect on those developments.”

The comments appear to refer to the judgement by Scotland’s Court of Session that the former Conservative Government’s decision to approve the Rosebank oil field development was unlawful. This was because it failed to consider the emissions that would be generated by use of the oil concerned.

The Labour Government has addressed those concerns by revising the assessment process but has proposed a ban on new exploration licences.

Given that the Scottish Government’s draft energy strategy recommended a presumption against further exploration on environmental grounds the reasons given for the delay in publication of the revised version rings hollow.

The SNP is playing for time as it tries to devise a formula that will appeal to supporters in the North East while keeping greens onside.

Humza Yousaf denounced the decision to approve Rosebank when he was first minister but the current SNP Government may be having second thoughts.

After Equinor published a revised environmental impact assessment for Rosebank last week ministers noted licensing matters were reserved to Westminster without expressing renewed opposition to the development.   

The Scottish Government spokesperson insisted the administration had laid out clear policies on energy supported by the launch of big funds but did not provide any evidence of their success. The spokesperson offered no details when asked how many jobs had been created under the Green Industrial Strategy launched in September last year.

With research by economists suggesting the number of renewables jobs created in Scotland has fallen well below the levels promised by SNP Governments, ministers appear to be relying on Chinese investors to boost the growth rate.

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They hailed news last week that Mingyang seemed keen to proceed with a plan to build a turbine blade production plant that has been under consideration for months.

Mingyang has chosen Ardersier in the Cromarty Firth freeport zone as the preferred site for a plant that it is hoped will create 1,500 jobs and open for business in 2028. Scotland has nothing on a similar scale having failed to develop the facilities required to capitalise on the development of big windfarms to date.

Parts of England have done much better. Around 1,500 people work in a turbine blade production plant in Hull, which was hammered by the decline of the fishing industry.

The Ardersier plant would require UK Government approval. Critics have expressed serious concerns on security grounds.

The plant will only be viable commercially if UK energy bill payers continue to provide huge amounts of support for firms to develop windfarms off the country.

Ms Martin said recently that such developments would be key to a just transition. She admitted they would only be worthwhile if energy firms completed expensive upgrades of transmission networks, the costs of which are added to household energy bills.

UK energy minister Ed Miliband suggested at the weekend that investment in the wider energy sector could create 40,000 jobs in Scotland over the next five years.

Amid Ms Martin’s wailing about Scotland’s ills, another part of the UK that was hit hard by the decline of heavy industry appears to be on the road to the kind of transition she has in mind.

This month Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen highlighted the transformation achieved on the site of the steelworks in Redcar that closed in 2015 with the loss of 2,200 jobs.

The site houses a range of plants serving low carbon energy industries including the £950m factory developed by Korean engineering giant SeAH to produce foundations for offshore windfarms.

Mr Houchen noted: “We took back control of the site and, in just a few short years, transformed it into Teesworks. It’s a place reborn, powering not just the recovery of our region but also leading the way nationally in development of cutting-edge industries.”

Mr Houchen said thousands of local people are benefitting from the secure, well-paid jobs being created on the site, which moved fast to secure tax breaks provided under the freeport scheme the former Conservative Government introduced in 2021.

The Scottish Government dithered over freeports while a collaboration agreement between the SNP and the Greens remained in force. It waited until 2023 to confirm that Green Freeports would be established on the Cromarty Firth and the Firth of Forth.

Given the success Teesside has enjoyed on the jobs front, the news that 150 workers at the SeAH plant went on strike over wages last week will provide little consolation for those who envy the area’s success.