Launching the report in Grangemouth this morning, the independent Commission urged the new UK Government and Scottish Government to not only support those whose current livelihoods are on the line, but also deliver tangible results for young people and the local community through a serious and detailed long-term plan.

“The retention of jobs and the local skills base on an intergenerational basis must be the core strategic aim of Grangemouth’s just transition plan,” says the report.

The Commission called for conditionalities on all public money deployed to support the green transition at Grangemouth, to ensure fair work and a lock in economic benefits for the surrounding community.

The report has five key messages:

1. The just transition plan for Grangemouth must earn the trust of workers and community.
2. The Grangemouth plan must be the first in a rapidly developed series of just transition plans for Scotland’s highest emitting sites.
3. A new intergenerational social contract is needed to safeguard young people and their community’s future.
4. Grangemouth needs a new economic model that goes well beyond the refinery, leveraged to deliver enduring community benefit.
5. The Commission will publish an assessment of progress towards a credible program of just transition planning and delivery for Grangemouth in its annual report in Q4 2024.

The Commission says Grangemouth is a “litmus test” for whether climate goals can be achieved in a fair way. Following the announcement last November of plans to close the refinery, the Commission said Grangemouth is clearly at risk of an unmanaged transition as seen previously in coal and steel.

“The industrial cluster at Grangemouth sits at the heart of our energy system and economy. The stakes for achieving a just transition for Grangemouth can hardly be overstated,” says the report.

The Commission is an independent expert advisory group with members drawn from business, industry, trade unions, environmental and community groups and academia. It aims to make sure the benefits and burdens of the major changes involved in Scotland’s net zero transition are shared as fairly as possible, and is tasked by the Scottish Government with making an annual assessment of progress towards a just transition to a low carbon economy.

The Commission writes: “As an industrial site of UK-wide strategic importance we welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to ensuring the best outcome possible for Grangemouth and hope the UK Government will play an active and enabling role on the Grangemouth Future Industry Board as it works to develop the Grangemouth Industrial Just Transition Plan.”

Following Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s description of Grangemouth as “a real priority”, last week it was announced Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, will co-chair the Grangemouth Future Industry Board’s (GFIB) Leadership Forum along with Gillian Martin, the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy. Formed in 2020, GFIB brings together leaders from key public sector and industry groups as well as trade unions to agree a plan for the future of Grangemouth.

The Commission said efforts by all levels of government have so far been insufficient. “Five years of policymaking on this agenda has not developed sufficiently to require high carbon emitters to deliver a just transition as standard practice. The current path will not deliver. The limitations of collective efforts to date are nowhere more clearly in evidence than at Grangemouth, which presents an acute challenge for applying a just transition approach, given the central role of a privately owned company and foreign state-owned enterprise, and the associated difficulties in setting conditions and implementing effective mechanisms for open dialogue about the site’s future.”

Stressing the need for credible plans to build trust and give reassurance to workers at the site as well as others involved in the site’s supply chain, the Commission says: “To make the vision credible, the plan must set out how progress will be monitored and evaluated against specific metrics and indicators, supported by a robust critical path analysis that maps contingencies and takes seriously the possibility of failure or underperformance across key elements of the strategy proposed, including those associated with specific technologies, fuels and regulations.”

The Commission said colleges, such as Forth Valley College, which supports a number of apprenticeships with major industrial players, have “a key strategic role that needs to be reflected through greater levels of investment to truly maximise their value as a bulwark of just transition.”

The Commission said plans for Grangemouth’s future need to include specific mechanisms to ensure the local community benefits directly from industrial activity, not only through job numbers, and to make positive use of the government’s leverage in negotiations with industry. “All public money/subsidy deployed to support the transition at Grangemouth must come with conditionalities linked to just transition, whether in terms of fair work, community benefit, equity stakes, profit-sharing mechanisms, environmental needs such as flood prevention. The refinery is an important industrial facility and source of livelihoods but it does not define the Grangemouth economy.”

The Commission visited Grangemouth earlier this year to meet with local people and organisations. It also worked with researchers at the University of Glasgow to record the perspectives of workers at the industrial site and their aspirations for a fair future.

This research found:

• Grangemouth workers feel insecure and devalued by the announced refinery closure.
• They do not feel consulted on crucial decisions about the future of their workplace.
• The closure announcement compounded disappointment for refinery workers who had already experienced restructuring and redundancies in 2020, which had been blamed on the then poorly performing oil market.
• A sense of frustration and anger with what was viewed as government sloganeering regarding the potential for a just transition and using Grangemouth and other fossil fuel skills bases to further renewables.
• Overwhelmingly, interviewees felt that a fair future meant the retention of secure, highly skilled, local employment in Grangemouth.

Prof. Dave Reay, co-chair of the Commission, said: “A just transition for Grangemouth needs to retain jobs, but it also needs to go further and deeper if it is to deliver a truly sustainable future for the town. We now need to see real ambition and tangible actions that earn the trust of people in Grangemouth and everyone whose livelihood is tied to the site.”

Satwat Rehman, co-chair of the Commission, said: “The move away from high carbon assets has been clearly foreseeable for some time given long-term trends. We expect UK and Scottish governments to take an active role in anticipating these changes and shaping them in a socially positive way. It will only be truly just if the new industrial model in Grangemouth provides a future for local young people and brings meaningful benefits to the community.”

Rachel McEwen, a commissioner, said: “The choice here is simple: we can always achieve net zero simply by producing nothing. But producing nothing is the definition of an unjust transition. A just transition to a low carbon world requires serious investment in the pipes and stores that enable the decarbonisation of the production process. The future of Grangemouth, and of Scotland’s other large emitters require accelerated progress to safely remove the carbon from the entire production system.”

Richard Hardy, National Secretary for Scotland and Ireland at the trade union Prospect and a commissioner, said: “The delivery of a Just Transition for Grangemouth must be a priority for Government at both Holyrood and Westminster. It represents the first chance for politicians to show that building better outcomes for workers and their communities in the face of industrial change is achievable and not simply empty words. At a time of growing concern and unhappiness amongst working class voters with “business as usual”, a Just Transition at Grangemouth has never been more vital for Scotland. The Union movement continues to stand ready to play our part in that Transition.

Deborah Long, chief officer at Scottish Environment LINK and a Commissioner, said: “As a critical test for Scotland’s Just Transition, Grangemouth is in danger of becoming an example of how to transition and leave communities and the local environment behind. We saw no clear plans for a planned and orderly transition. Instead, there is a danger that international companies will seek subsidies without conditionalities that ensure benefits accrue to local communities and protect the local environment”.

Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland and a commissioner, said: “As our report makes clear, there’s still time to put Grangemouth on a path toward a just transition for workers and the local community, but only if we act quickly and only if every stakeholder begins pulling in the same direction. The recent announcement by UK and Scottish government ministers, to work collaboratively to secure a sustainable future for Grangemouth, is therefore a welcome first step. Done well, a successful just transition plan at Grangemouth could be the template for the rest of the country, where we need to see similar plans developed for every high emitting facility.”

Dr Ewan Gibbs and Riyoko Shibe of the University of Glasgow, who produced the research element of the report, said: “The Grangemouth workers we interviewed have demonstrated decades of commitment to their workplace and industry, but they are also ready and willing to consider comparable employment in manufacturing and renewable energy sectors. They feel disappointed in their employer over the refinery closure announcement, but also badly let down by both the UK and Scottish governments. Only action that delivers a clear pathway to sustain secure local employment of a similar or higher quality than presently on offer at the refinery will change that.”