Grangemouth Refinery: Lessons for aviation workers on sustainable transitions

By staff - Safe Landing, April 16, 2024

Safe Landing recently attended the “Keep Grangemouth Working” event organised by Unite the Union at the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) conference in Dundee, Scotland. Grangemouth refinery is a classic case of an ‘unjust’ transition where poor industrial planning for the shift to low-carbon operations has led to major impacts for the livelihoods of workers and communities in the area. 

There are definitely lessons to be learned for the aviation industry – particularly as a sustainable future for the fuels sector is so intertwined with sustainable aviation!

Grangemouth Refinery: Scotland’s only refinery facing imminent closure

Grangemouth Refinery is one of the six remaining refineries in the UK and the only refinery in Scotland. It produces jet fuel which supplies airports at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Newcastle. It also produces a significant proportion of Scotland’s petrol and diesel. It’s estimated to account for approximately 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing base. 

In November 2023, the refinery owners, Petroineos, announced that the refinery could cease operations as soon as 2025 following an 18 month process to convert the facility to a fuel import/export terminal only. This could mean up to 500 jobs are lost at the site. 

This event was focused on the fight to maintain those jobs. 

This is a real life example of potential job losses from high-carbon infrastructure as the low-carbon transition (e.g. from petrol/diesel to electric vehicles) takes place. This could equally occur at an airport or aviation production facility unless transition plans are developed early, and future-proof investments are made. As Grangemouth produces jet fuel, there’s also an obvious overlap with the necessary transition required in aviation.

Lack of clear industrial strategy

Participants expressed being “absolutely flabbergasted by the ineptitude of politicians” and there was immense frustration at the UK and Scottish Governments’ lack of industrial strategy, and the view that they appeared to be “holding hands with corporate interests”. The biggest failure was seen to be the Scottish Government’s response that this is a commercial decision and a matter of private investment that they wouldn’t intervene in.

Loss of jobs, skills and community

The Unite the Union organisers spoke passionately about the loss of not just the refinery, and the jobs, but the “loss of a community”. On top of direct employment, the site also employs thousands of contractors, and various businesses are supported by the supply chain of the site, and the trade and custom of the workforce.

They asserted that the “highly-skilled workers” that would be lost from Grangemouth were the ones needed to “shape the green agenda and green transition”. However, they saw Grangemouth as a “net exporter of talent”, with workers trained there having to leave to find jobs in other countries, leaving a hole in the local economy. 

Just Transition

Participants claimed that the talk of a “just transition” to a green economy was “infuriating”. The “skills passport” identified as a means of high-carbon workers switching to low-carbon jobs is apparently struggling as renewable energy companies “don’t want to pay the salaries of skilled unionised workers.” 

Kenny Macaskill, UK Member of Parliament, noted that the offshore wind farms built on the nearby Firth of Forth – ‘Seagreen’ (part-owned by the French TotalEnergies), and ‘Neart na Gaoithe’ (owned by French EDF and Irish ESB) were owned by foreign entities, with the parts manufactured abroad, and foreign labour contracted to build the turbines. 

The fight for jobs at Grangemouth was seen as “not just a test of a Just Transition, but a test for the whole trade union movement”. Overall, the mood was that the union needs to push for a proper industrial strategy, and a fightback against “absolutely ruthless” multinational corporate interests, and hapless politicians (with MPs on all sides of the political divide facing criticism). Solidarity was expressed with the steel campaign in Port Talbot, where thousands of jobs have also been endangered by closure of the blast furnaces. 

Low-Carbon Transition Plans

Following the talks, we spoke to some of the Grangemouth organisers about the future plans for the site. They noted that while Petroineos claimed to have plans for low-carbon technologies, these were 10-15 years away, and had barely got off the drawing board. This meant the organisers saw them as effectively no use in preventing job losses this year. 

This demonstrates the danger of leaving transition plans to corporate strategy, and also the need for workers to think independently and push for worker-led proposals for the transition. Clearly we will need fuels in the future, but these must be alternative fuels rather than fossil fuels. A robust transition plan for the refinery, showing clear roadmaps towards these alternative production processes, would help cement the case for retaining workers and the case for industry and government financial support.

We asked about plans for alternative aviation fuel (so-called “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” or “SAF”) production, and heard that while Petroineos talks about biofuels, no equipment has been built. Their plans apparently involve the HEFA (from waste oil/fat feedstock) biofuel production pathway , which we know is incredibly limited in its ability to scale due to feedstock constraints. We would recommend that Grangemouth considers other more scalable fuels to convert to.

An interesting observation here is that the UK aviation industry trade body “Sustainable Aviation” has drawn up a map of key locations around the UK for future alternative aviation fuel production, and identified Grangemouth as a key location which could potentially support 740-1390 additional jobs. With the anticipated UK “SAF” Mandate expected to require jet fuel producers supply 10% “SAF” by 2030, there is a huge scale-up required, and we would have expected this to result in increased facilities and jobs at Grangemouth. We also learnt that Grangemouth is the only refinery in the UK with hydrocracker equipment, which could make it suitable for certain types of alternative jet fuel production. 

Map of potential “SAF” plant locations around the UK. Grangemouth is identified as a key location for a potential plant.

Missed opportunities – could we have avoided this situation?

The situation at Grangemouth is of course an incredibly difficult one for workers and their communities. It also feels like one that could have been very avoidable. 

We have known for decades that we need to transition away from high-carbon oil & gas refining. We also know the nature of large corporations, in that they will delay inevitable changes and push back investment decisions for as long as they can. They’ll then refuse to budge and threaten to close entire sites without government investment: essentially a form of industrial blackmail. We’re seeing this at Grangemouth with Petroineos and in Port Talbot with Tata. 

Petroineos is a joint venture between the Chinese state-owned oil firm (PetroChina) and the petrochemicals empire (Ineos) owned by British billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe, one of the wealthiest people in the UK. These are massive companies, with large profits, and huge capacities for investment. 

We should have developed low-carbon transition plans for these sites long ago and begun implementing them through early design, rather than late disaster. Government finance over the past decade could have been dependent on corporate investment to transform facilities towards manufacturing the products of tomorrow. In doing so, they would have secured the long-term future of the sites, and with it the workforce.

As workers, and trade unions, we also need to recognise that we have sat on our hands and allowed this to happen. It is one thing criticising the “ruthless” nature of corporations, and lack of long-term industrial planning from politicians. But what were we expecting? And where is our plan for the sustainable future of our industries? We know that if we also leave the transition plans to the same people, then this cycle of short-termism will only continue. 

A call for Workers’ Assemblies across industries

At Safe Landing, we advocate for Workers’ Assemblies as a format for giving workers (who possess the in-depth subject matter expertise of their sector), the time and the space to develop worker-led recommendations for the future of their industry. As with aviation, we think there would be a lot of merit in applying this within the chemicals and refining sector. After all, aviation’s own sustainability strategy is hugely reliant on cleaner, alternative fuels being produced! 

Finally, it needs to be understood that a robust plan for tomorrow will help secure jobs today. A clear vision for these sites, in e.g. 2040, will demonstrate the need to utilise workers and their skills now in order to achieve it.

We have offered our help towards assessing future plans for “SAF” production at the site and also hope to be invited to the Unite the Union “Chemicals Pharmaceuticals Process and Textiles” national sector committee to present our plans for Workers’ Assemblies soon.

As an example of how such an assembly for Grangemouth Refinery might work, watch this video clip of our recent demonstrator workshop for aviation workers in Bristol:

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.