United Kingdom (UK)

By Emma Roberts and Sasha Josette - GND Media, June 4, 2024

By Clara Polliard, Jason Wyatt, Claire Peden, Jan Hines, Ellen Robottom, John Morrisey, and Morten Thaysen - Tipping Point UK, May 29, 2024

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.

By Clara Polliard, Ian Hodson, Janet Newsham, and Nuala Lam - Tipping Point, April 11, 2024

By Jonathan Essex - Greener Jobs Alliance, March 19, 2024

This is the second part of Jonathan’s discussion of a new approach to a Green Transition, as presented at the GJA AGM on 13 February.

We need a green transition, that is labour- not material- or technology-intensive, increasing how the economy flows locally rather than how big it is nationally or globally. The new jobs will not be in production in the UK but reproduction. It would depend upon new skills and jobs that reimagine, repurpose and reuse what already exists, and thus on activities that retain embodied carbon. Instead of using ever more energy to make more stuff that economy of scale and comparative advantage turn into fossil fuel powered global supply chains: a revolution of upskilling is needed to reconnect communities. Instead of Do-it-yourself, think: Re-inspire Your Community.

The shift to this new economy could be energised through local green jobs plans that ratchet down our level of resource supply and demand, making better use of what the economy already has, including repurposing resources like steel regionally and locally, reinsulating homes, renewables and less overall energy use. This would be a clear alternative to continuing to exploit more North Sea oil and gas, and also to end the massive predicted increase in the use of lithium and rare earth metals to power the transition to electric vehicles – reducing the scale of consumption of these, and our propensity to travel and consume ever more. 

Such green jobs plans need to be set in an economics of redistribution that turns politics into something we all participate in, something that provides the glue and grease that links the climate science and emergency declarations and policies into real plans, everywhere that can deliver sufficient collective transformation. That would be a great upskilling in contrast to the present absence of any government requirement on business to provide pathways to new skills and jobs beyond that company. That requires a government to go beyond doing litmus tests and tinkering in the market and instead to drive forward with a clear public-led plan. 

So how might this start in the absence of such a plan? I am involved in a local community enterprise – I am part of Energy Action Redhill and Reigate. Our leaky home surveys use infrared cameras to show residents where heat leaks, and we distribute free and half price insulation to households in need. But not just that! We are NVQ-ing up to levels 3 and 4 a group of energy champions. Initiatives like this are already getting skills in place, in readiness for government to finally mainstream investment in retrofitting the UK’s poorly insulated and leaky housing stock. 

Consider how this might look if the economy behaved like the national electricity grid. If we opt for a scaling up of renewables alongside the rethinking of demand explored above, the national grid will not need to expand exponentially to cope with the electrification of heating, transport and all else. Instead, more energy will be generated and consumed locally, and the grid will have a greater role in rebalancing and redistributing power, alongside new storage and demand management. Similarly, instead of continuing to increase the scale of energy generation and consumption, and the ‘economy’ distributing product from where it is centrally produced to consumers, it might serve to redistribute between far more self-reliant local economies, that retain more of their own work, and have a greater sense of place as the local vernacular of architecture, the seasonal variations of diet, and sports and pastimes more dependent on where you live.

By Jonathan Essex - Greener Jobs Alliance, March 19, 2024

The Greener Jobs Alliance was very pleased to invite Jonathan Essex to speak at our AGM on 13 February. Here Jonathan expands on the ideas in that presentation in a two-part blog posting, focusing, in this first part, on the urgent need for a different approach to transition in several specific sectors.

Green jobs plans are an important part of the transition to a zero-carbon economy. But they need wider political commitments to make this happen. This piece explores the need for a stronger position by the UK government on phasing out fossil fuels, for a transition for heavy industry such as steel, for reducing overall demand for energy and materials, and for this to be set within an economics of redistribution. 

No more oil, coal and gas

First, we need to stop extracting ever more coal, oil and gas. We can’t afford to extract and burn current reserves, let alone new reserves. That Rosebank, the large new oilfield in the North Sea, should not be exploited, is a litmus test of political commitment to sufficient climate action. It has long been known that we must leave at least 80% of coal, oil and gas as unburnable to stay within 2°C of global warming. In 2021, the International Energy Agency said that no more oil, gas or coal reserves should be developed to stay within the limit of 1.5°C. In 2023 researchers have estimated that 60% of existing oil, gas and coal fields and mines already open or under construction need to be shut down. 

The implication for the UK is clear. No more offshore or onshore fossil fuel extraction should start, and existing North Sea oil and gas fields should be phased out. 

But to constrain fossil fuel burning within global limits we need more global restraint of supply and demand than has been envisaged, let alone agreed, at global climate conferences.

Firstly, a non-fossil fuel proliferation treaty is needed to keep large amounts of existing reserves, including that already being exploited, in the ground in a fair manner. This needs a global transition fund and clear agreed plans for its implementation. 

The UK and other historic emitters should lead by example. For the UK this means not just no to Rosebank but no new coal mine in Cumbria, no fracking or other onshore extraction. 

But that is only half of the story. Research by Fergus Green on climate policy highlights that to be effective, policies to limit fossil fuel extraction and constrain demand for oil, coal and gas need to work together. They use the analogy of a pair of scissors. Unless pressure is put on both sides, to reduce supply and demand together, then policies to cut carbon will not work. 

So, alongside limiting extraction, real efforts to curtail demand are needed. Such demand reduction must start with key sectors of the economy that have to date largely defied efforts to decarbonise. Three are explored here: transport (particularly aviation, shipping and road freight), heavy industry and the overall demand for high carbon ways of living. To explore this the fastest growing form of transport emissions – aviation – and perhaps the cornerstone of heavy industry – the steel industry – are considered, before exploring how society as a whole might make sufficient changes.

By Matthew Paterson - The Ecologist, February 12, 2024

Britain’s climate 'leadership' is based on the profoundly unjust and violent transition that was the defeat of the 1980s miners' strike.

Margaret Thatcher is often taken as an early pioneer in climate change among leading politicians. Her speech to the Royal Society in September 1988 helped propel climate change onto the political agenda not just in Britain but around the world. 

But her government was much more important in shaping the course of Britain’s actions on climate change a good deal earlier in her period of office. 

Her decisive intervention was rather in the assault on the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), with the strike of 1984-5 as the decisive event.

By Finlay Asher, et. al - Safe Landing, February 6, 2024

By Todd Smith - Safe Landing, January 28, 2024