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At the moment, SEPA and Zero Waste Scotland are collaborating on work on aggregation, involving an analysis of where plastics that are not covered under the deposit return scheme would go for processing and what the volume of that plastic is. That information is going to be useful to potential developers.

Whether there would need to be any changes to regulations is not something that has been flagged to me as an issue at all.

We did not want this situation, Mr Coffey. We wanted Petroineos to make different decisions and potentially take forward some of the things for which the Scottish Government was offering part funding, such as switching to a different type of refinery. I have outlined some of them today. We also wanted Petroineos to extend its refining process in order for there not to be a gap between the cessation of refining and bringing new opportunities on stream. Believe me, we tried our best, but a commercial decision was made by its shareholders and its board to do it the way that it has been done, and it is for them to answer why they did it in such a way.

I want to come back to the point about how well-placed Grangemouth, as an industrial cluster, is for new opportunities. Grangemouth has had it tough in the last year, and the closure is devastating for the wider community—the refinery has been there for more than 100 years and it is totemic. There are 400 or 500 high-value jobs associated with the plant. There are other viable industries in the Grangemouth cluster that are still there and working but looking to the future as to how they can expand and diversify.

As devastating as it is that Petroineos has made the decision to cease refining at Grangemouth, with project willow bringing in other opportunities that are associated not only with the refinery but with the wider cluster, there is an opportunity for Grangemouth to become a real powerhouse. It is connected in the pipeline infrastructure; it is associated with the green port; it is ideally located in the heart of Scotland; it is on the Firth of Forth; and it is an industrial cluster that has a long-term future.

Michelle Thomson mentioned some areas where we could focus our energy on what the site could become in the future. At the moment, our focus is on reducing the gap between the refinery closure and what that future will be, as much as possible. Many of the workers have been redeployed to other parts of the Ineos company, and there have been fairs at which other companies, such as Scottish Power, have offered jobs to workers who are facing redundancy. Forth Valley College is providing those workers with opportunities for reskilling and filling in skills gaps. Those opportunities have been accelerated by the money that has come in from the Scottish and UK Governments. The college has a centre of excellence, which is making a wider offer to the area through the courses that it is providing related to future jobs that are associated with a just transition.

However, the central fact remains that workers were given notice of redundancy and are having to find other work, with the exception of the small percentage of them who are being redeployed to the import terminal, and the ones who are involved in the decommissioning of the site. It is a staged approach, but the fact remains that refining has ceased there.

It is not the way that things should be done. The role for Governments is to try to encourage different decisions to be made. Where we are unable to do that, we are trying to reduce the gap as much as possible. We are working at pace through the task force to say that the site is absolutely open for business in order to bring low-carbon opportunities into that cluster. I hope that, in however many years’ time, we can look back and say that, although we did not want what happened to happen, it was a turning point for Grangemouth that enabled it to become a low-carbon industry cluster.

Kenny MacDermid has just given me what I think is the final figure for the funding to date, which is £87 million. That is for lots of things—the growth deal, additional resources, studies that have been done on hydrogen, and something that I should have mentioned when we were discussing project willow, which is the £2 million funding for the feasibility study on the pipeline. When we think about project willow, project GRACE—or the Grangemouth advanced capture project—the biorefinery and so on, we can see that the numbers all mount up. I can certainly furnish the committee with that information in writing.

I have great sympathy with what is behind your questions, because I have the same questions. My UK Government partners in the task force know of my concerns. There must be consideration of the flexibility that is needed. The £25 million just transition fund is modest in comparison with the funds that the National Wealth Fund has at its disposal. The UK Government wants what we want—for the projects to be taken forward.

On how the National Wealth Fund operates, it has stated that it will put in money for projects that are commercially viable. We do not want something that could become commercially viable and which just needs an injection of more seed funding not to be supported. I am discussing the issue with the UK Government. Should such a situation arise, I would make the point that the National Wealth Fund must step in so that we do not jeopardise any projects that have the potential to be very successful. I do not think that it would want to jeopardise such projects. There will maybe need to be a bit of flexibility. At what point would the NWF consider something to be sufficiently commercially viable for it to step in? I am concerned that that has not been quantified to me.

The good news is that UK Government ministers and I have been working closely on the issue. That is a real sea change in comparison with what happened previously, when there was not close collaboration. The task force reports to ministers. At least monthly, we have a meeting where we bottom out a lot of these questions. Jan Robertson reports to us on the status of all the projects, too. Therefore, it is not as though we will not know about the risks in relation to growing something—we are in the room, having granular-level updates on the projects.

Yes.

The enterprise agencies that are involved—such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise—will absolutely discuss all the opportunities for transition with any operators, but I will take that point away to consider.

The First Minister has met Jim Ratcliffe, and I met him last year, too, along with Ed Miliband. From those meetings, I can say that Ineos wants to stay in the cluster. That is what it is telling us.

Of course.

I will try to be as brief as possible.

This will not be easy to summarise.

Recycling is one of our medium-term opportunities. The Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 set the direction of travel in relation to where Scotland wants to be on the circular economy. We also have things happening at a pan-UK level, such as the deposit return scheme and the producer liability stream.

One thing that comes through the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 is that, wherever possible, we want to take as much as possible of our waste or feedstock to whatever domestic recycling opportunity exists; we do not want to be sending it elsewhere. We are therefore doing an analysis or study of what recycling opportunities look like in Scotland at the moment and where the gaps are, particularly with a view to the development of the DRS and the waste route map. That is a huge opportunity for the Grangemouth cluster, and we are mapping recycling facilities in Scotland and where the gaps and opportunities are. There are massive opportunities in that area. We want to know where the feedstock comes from and about any opportunities to turn plastics into fuels and so on.

We have engaged with a number of potential developers on the recommendation around the aggregation of waste plastics, on which we are working with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Zero Waste Scotland.

In relation to HEFA, there is obviously the investment and project side of things, but the other part of the task force’s work is to identify where regulatory change has to happen in order to remove any barriers to investment. A very live and granular conversation is being had about that. Most of the things that need to be done in relation to regulation sit with the UK Government, but it is completely open to looking at that.

We are not standing still and waiting for the regulations to change with regard to the HEFA cap; we are looking at what Scotland could offer in terms of feedstock. That is why the James Hutton Institute and Scotland’s Rural College are doing the pilot study. The study should report in July, after which there will be trials, in late summer, of the type of crops and the viability of those crops. I will be working closely with my colleagues in the rural affairs team in the Scottish Government, because that work will make a material difference to what we grow in Scotland and where the land is for growing it.

I have mentioned some of the issues around sustainable aviation fuel. My assessment is that airlines want to use more SAF, but that there are few opportunities for them to buy that in the UK, which leads to some of the issues that Mr MacDonald mentioned and to them procuring quite a lot of it from Europe. Regulation in that area is reserved to the UK Government.

No one has mentioned hydrogen so far, but we have had some good news around RWE’s plans, which are supported by Ineos. Ineos was successful in the second hydrogen allocation round, which is fantastic news, because it means that there is an opportunity to have RWE come and invest in the Grangemouth area and produce hydrogen there. There is a lot going on around hydrogen, but, again, regulation in that area sits at a UK-Government level.

I assure Daniel Johnson that there is a synergy on the part of the two Governments’ ambitions to remove barriers in order for progress to be made on some of the projects that Jan Robertson and her team are looking at. If there are any regulatory barriers, they will be identified, flushed out and, hopefully, tackled.