In an unusual partnership, unions and climate groups have joined forces to call for emergency funding for North Sea workers ahead of the government’s spending review.
Climate group Greenpeace and a coalition of trade unions rallied outside parliament on Wednesday to call for a £1.9 billion annual package of funding to support the energy transition.
The groups put forward a proposal for an emergency funding package to help North Sea oil and gas workers transition to renewables jobs in February, ahead of next month’s government spending review.
“We joined forces with some unions ahead of the budget in October to try and start pressuring the government to step in where we see private energy industries have failed and to support workers to create good-quality jobs,” Ruby Earle, worker transition lead at campaign group Platform told Energy Voice.
“This morning was a really amazing show of solidarity and collaboration between those two groups and these two movements.”
The oil and gas sector has lost 227,000 jobs in the past ten years, despite record profits and 400 new drilling licences being issued by the government over the same period.
Harbour Energy said this month that it would cut 250 more people from its workforce offshore, while multinational Petroineos halted operations at the Grangemouth oil refinery despite a plan to transition to sustainable aviation fuel.
“Rachel Reeves must commit to this emergency package of funding to protect workers and their communities,” said Mel Evans, climate team leader at Greenpeace UK.
“If she fails to act, she leaves their livelihoods at the mercy of greedy oil bosses and will undermine community confidence in the transition to renewable energy.”
© Supplied by Greenpeace‘Urgent necessity’
Claire Peden, Unite for a Workers’ Economy team lead, warned that 30,000 jobs “are at risk” in the sector by 2030.
The coalition of unions and climate groups called for a package of funding to support local jobs, invest in port infrastructure and upskill workers in offshore industries in the North Sea.
That would include £1.1bn a year of funding to support local jobs, £440m of investment in ports and £355m a year in a dedicated training fund for offshore workers.
Earle said an emergency funding package to provide £1.9bn per year for the rest of parliament is a “completely urgent necessity”.
“We think this will send a signal to North Sea workers that the government is serious about delivering a just transition and it’s not just empty promises,” she said.
She added that the money should be spent on investing in public and community wind manufacturing and “the growth of the offshore wind in the UK”. Offshore wind energy capacity has the potential to grow by up to six times in the next 15 years, according to the coalition.
Oil and gas communities are currently facing “the sort of decline of the oil and gas basin” that other communities have faced in previous industrial declines, she said.
The majority of jobs in the offshore wind sector have also been lost to companies operating outside the UK due to a lack of domestic manufacturing capabilities, according to Earle.
“This is an opportunity to be able to grow a huge amount of jobs in the UK in the areas across the country that need them,” she said.
She said there is growing “keenness within the climate movement to be doing more just transition work”.
By partnering with unions such as Unite the Union and RMT, she said, “we’re able to put our power together and increase our voice and call on government to actually do what is needed”.
Port upgrade
The coalition is also calling for millions of pounds to upgrade ports. Earle said an “underinvestment in ports means that they’re currently too small and too slow”.
“That means that many businesses and local workers, which could be benefitting from the growth of renewable energy in the UK, are actually losing out to vital opportunities overseas,” she said.
Countries like Denmark, Germany and Spain have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in ports, resulting in huge jobs creation and a boost to the economy.
