Seòmar agus comataidhean

It is very clear that we are about to exceed 1.5°C of global warming. That is not a safe threshold: it is a dangerous threshold for humanity.

I will wrap up, Presiding Officer. If we continue business as usual in the face of catastrophic climate change, we risk not only jobs but food production, catastrophic flooding and wildfires, loss of low-lying and coastal communities, global conflict and, ultimately, making large parts of planet earth uninhabitable. There are no jobs for anybody on a dead planet.

Yes, certainly.

I urge the Scottish Government and the oil and gas industry in Scotland to take the situation of the closure of Grangemouth as a warning of what will happen more widely if just transition planning is not undertaken properly and in line with the recommendations of the committee’s inquiry.

I thank the cabinet secretary very much for that intervention. We need to know about that strategy because there is disagreement across the chamber about how long the phase-out of oil and gas is going to take, where it will be phased out, who will be affected and when that is going to happen. We need to know the timeline so that we can all plan for it, because a just transition is a planned transition. Without that energy strategy in front of us, we cannot even start to make the plan. That is the first step.

The next step, as so many people across the chamber have discussed, will be to speak with communities and workers. What do they want? How do we find that out? The answer is that we ask them. What do they see for their futures? What is their vision for themselves and their children? From some of the work that the committee has done on that, people give answers such as, “We’d like to see more public transport,” “We need more housing, so that we can take advantage of opportunities,” “We need more investment,” and “We need improved skills training.”

The committee’s output and some of its recommendations provide us with an expansion of the definition of a just transition that Kevin Stewart shared with us, which was only a few words. The committee’s outputs provide a description of what a just transition is—a clear definition of what we are trying to achieve.

That description covers the following aspects: community and stakeholder engagement across people, workers and local businesses in order to understand how they are going to be affected and their vision for their community; clarity on governance, whether that is the Grangemouth future industry board or appropriate governance for whatever plan we are talking about; and local economic and infrastructure development, which is always important in a transition. With regard to that infrastructure development, people need fast internet, trains, buses and connections, housing and all the pieces of functional communities. They need those things regardless of whether we are undergoing a just transition but, as we know that we need the transition, that sort of investment is needed to create economic prosperity. The description also covers new technologies, Government funding and, of course, an understanding of how communities will benefit in the future. All the committee’s recommendations provide us with a lovely script for how a just transition can be implemented across Scotland.

Finally, I would like to set out a green vision for the future, where transportation is primarily buses, trains, wheels or people’s own two feet; where town centres are safe for children and, in fact, everybody to walk or cycle to school or elsewhere; where industries are responsible for their damage to the environment, for being nature positive and for restoring the environment around themselves; where business owners are responsible for and accountable to their workers and communities and are not billionaire tax exiles living elsewhere; where community spaces exist for people to connect and develop themselves and for art and creativity; where our energy is provided by wind, tidal and solar energy; where we can generate green hydrogen to store energy and use it in our heavy industry—

—and where homes and buildings are insulated and efficient. That is the green vision that we can build with a successful just transition.

Will the member give way?

I am delighted that Daniel Johnson has asked me that question, because one of the frustrating things about this conversation is that many people say that the transition away from oil and gas should be demand-led, when demand for energy is, in fact, very much managed by Government policy and by things such as the aviation industry not paying tax on its jet fuel. That increases the demand for jet fuel, thereby manipulating the market in transportation to give advantage to aviation over trains and more sustainable energy.

The implementation of rules on house building and, for example, what landlords are required to do to insulate their properties will manipulate the demand for energy. It is not good enough to say that we must keep using oil and gas for as long as there is demand. What we need to do is to drive down demand as quickly as possible, which means implementing all the other policies to make sure that we move away from fossil fuels to keep global heating as close to 1.5°C as we can.

Yes, absolutely, biofuels will play some part, because aviation will always need to be part of the mix, especially for island communities and emergencies. However, the idea that aviation can continue to grow as an industry fuelled by biofuels is not a realistic vision for the future of land use.

What has been highlighted by members across the chamber is that emissions-heavy industries cannot grow. They must change or they must be phased out. What would be really helpful for that process in Scotland and what we need very urgently is the energy strategy from the Scottish Government. I would like to ask the cabinet secretary directly when we will see the final published energy strategy. Is she able to answer that question now?

Does the member recognise that the oil and gas that is pulled out of the North Sea is sold on the international market? It is not reserved for domestic use. We already import oil and gas, because that is how international markets work. Shutting down oil production in the North Sea, in line with our climate targets—phasing that out—is necessary for us to reach our climate targets, and it will not affect how much oil and gas we import, because domestic production is not related to domestic use.

I thank my committee colleagues and the clerks for their work on reviewing both of the just transition plans.

The announcement on 12 September that the Grangemouth site will close next summer is a brutal blow for the community. As my colleague Gillian Mackay, who grew up 200 yards from the refinery, said on that day:

“All of us in the town know somebody who is employed directly or indirectly by the refinery. They’re the ones now suffering. A lot of people will be devastated, angry and extremely worried about what will happen next. I am too, I feel the same.

This is the opposite of the just transition that is needed for the site and for Grangemouth. We have known for a long time that change is needed. Lessons have not been learned from other closures like Longannet.

Successive Scottish and UK Governments should have taken action to provide a transition that put workers first. Grangemouth is now paying the price of that inaction.

The workers at the site are some of the most talented and skilled anywhere in our country. They deserve so much better than the appalling way they have been treated by INEOS.

We can’t allow local workers or their families to be left behind at the whim of a billionaire. If Jim Ratcliffe had any concern for the wellbeing of the community, he would be in Grangemouth today looking the workers directly in the eye.

It is urgent that the UK and Scottish governments work together to secure local jobs and a long-term future for the site and the community.”

Gillian Mackay’s comments highlight two fundamental points that give us the opportunity to start setting out what a just transition is and is not. So far, this is an example of what it is not. First, Scotland’s transition to a net zero economy will require some businesses to change or close and some industries to contract.

We all knew that the Grangemouth site would not be able to continue business as usual in a net zero world. Change was coming, but instead of acknowledging that and planning ahead for that, it was business as usual right up to the point when the site’s closure was announced. What should have been a staged transition towards a more sustainable way of working and what could have been an exciting future for the workers and community has, instead, ended with last month’s devastating announcement.

I appreciate that that work is now under way in a sort of last-minute panic, but we have known for decades that the climate crisis is coming. It is not a new thing. A just transition would not have put the people of Grangemouth into such a distressed state. We have known for a long while that it was not sustainable.

That brings me nicely to my second point about what a just transition is and is not. Allowing billionaire tax exiles to own our country’s key economic assets is a threat to our economy and communities, to the vital services that those assets provide and to the just transition.

Dr Ewan Gibbs, who is a senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, has been undertaking research into Grangemouth as an instance of just transition governance, and has pointed out that the ownership pattern of Grangemouth is reasonably typical of the Scottish oil and gas sector. Petroineos is a partnership between a privately listed company and a foreign state-owned enterprise.

The 2023 parliamentary inquiry into the sustainability and just transition of the Grangemouth refinery expressed serious concerns regarding the lack of engagement by Ineos, stating that the company’s refusal to provide evidence was a missed opportunity to be transparent about its contributions to Scotland’s net zero targets. As Gillian Mackay has said:

“It has all the hallmarks of a business that having squeezed what it can out of its workforce knows it is running out of road and is looking to cut and run and to hell with the consequences.”

The Scottish Greens have long believed that public services should be owned by the public, and that the energy generation and production that are so fundamental to all our interests are no different.

I share the concerns of the parliamentary inquiry about just transition planning for Grangemouth and I support its recommendations. I have the same concerns about Scotland’s wider transition to net zero. We cannot pretend that the enormous changes to come in our journey to net zero will allow us to continue with business as usual. That was not true for Grangemouth and is not true elsewhere.

Change is coming. If we grasp the nettle by defining and planning for that change, we can also seize the opportunities and benefits of jobs, innovation and new technologies.