How SNP incompetence over energy industry 'just transition' will cost Scotland dear
The Scottish Government’s ‘just transition fund’ has spent £43 million over two years but so far has only managed to save just 120 jobs and create 110
There was a time when talk of a ‘just transition’ from fossil fuels to renewables may have seemed like a theoretical issue, rather than one of vital importance to people’s livelihoods. However, a report last month by researchers at Robert Gordon University underlined, for all those still living in that past, just how urgent the situation has become.
They warned the North Sea oil and gas workforce could shrink by 400 jobs – the same number as lost with the closure of the Grangemouth refinery – every two weeks for the next five years. Professor Paul de Leeuw warned the “window of opportunity for delivering a just transition is closing”.
This is the background against which we should consider a new Scottish Government report showing their ‘just transition fund’ spent £43 million over two years, managing to save just 120 jobs and create an equally pitiful 110. In other words, it has taken two years to offset the kind of losses that may soon occur on a near-weekly basis.
READ MORE: North Sea oil and gas: Why the bridge to the future is being burned, as 600 Aberdeen job losses show
‘Wrecking ball’
The government report stressed “many of the projects are still in their early phases, and long-term impacts... will take time to materialise”. However, Douglas Lumsden MSP, the Scottish Conservatives’ net-zero spokesman, rightly pointed out that “this paltry return will do nothing to allay the fears of tens of thousands of highly skilled workers in Scotland’s oil and gas sector”.
Accusing both the SNP and Labour of “taking a wrecking ball to [the] industry”, he said the report confirmed both parties “have not got a clue how to properly protect jobs for the future”. This may be somewhat unfair on Labour, given they have been in power for 12 months and have introduced measures like state-owned firm GB Energy, the impacts of which are still to be tested.
However, the SNP have been in charge in Scotland for 18 years and this crisis has been a long time coming, so it is a disgrace we are still in the ‘early phases’ of government action. This appears to be yet another example of SNP incompetence in government, and one for which all Scotland may pay a heavy price.
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