Swinney pledges extra £25m for Grangemouth and calls for matched funding

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Swinney pledges extra £25m for Grangemouth and calls for matched funding

John Swinney has pledged a further £25 million to secure a “just transition” for Grangemouth, calling on the UK Government to match the Scottish Government’s funding. The First Minister said the Labour Government must “do what it said it would do before the election”. However, he praised the recent discussions he has had with Labour […]

John Swinney has pledged a further £25 million to secure a “just transition” for Grangemouth, calling on the UK Government to match the Scottish Government’s funding.

The First Minister said the Labour Government must “do what it said it would do before the election”.

However, he praised the recent discussions he has had with Labour ministers Ed Miliband and Michael Shanks on the future of the industrial site.

Earlier this month, redundancy letters were sent out to staff at the oil refinery owned by Petroineos – with some 65 of around 500 jobs expected to be retained.

It was announced last year that the central Scotland facility would close and transition to become an import terminal, as Petroineos reported massive losses at the refinery.

A £1.5 million report into the feasibility of Grangemouth becoming a low-carbon energy hub, known as Project Willow, is due to be published by the end of the month.
John Swinney announced the new funding in a statement to the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday, saying it would come from ScotWind revenues in a budget amendment.

Mr Swinney said: “Any redundancy, whether voluntary or compulsory, is a matter of deep regret.

“That is particularly so given that this government believes that refining at Grangemouth should continue, that this closure is premature, and that it is detrimental to Scotland’s transition to net zero.”

A careers fair will take place on March 6, he said, with 19 companies taking part.

He said the additional £25 million for the Grangemouth just transition fund would take the Scottish Government’s total investment for the site to £87 million.

This new money will expedite any proposals which come from Project Willow, he said.

The report is examining other industries which could exist on the site such as plastics recycling, hydrogen production and sustainable aviation fuel.

Scotland’s only oil refinery will close in the second quarter of 2025 with the loss of 400 jobs.

He said collaboration with Energy Secretary Mr Miliband would continue, but he urged the UK Government to at least match the Scottish Government’s just transition fund.

The First Minister said: “We need the UK Government to do at least the same and deliver a fair amount to avoid significant economic disruption in central Scotland, and to protect and promote Scotland and Grangemouth’s future interests.

“In short, we need this Labour Government to do what it said it would do before the election.”

The recent UK Government’s recent growth deal money does not recognise the urgency of the situation, he said.

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay welcomed the funding announcement but blamed the Scottish Government for creating a “hostile environment” for fossil fuel firms.

He said: “I find it remarkable that in a statement of around 1,600 words the words ‘oil and gas’ were not even mentioned once.

“The truth is that the party who used to champion Scotland’s oil now seem to regard it as a dirty word.

“Grangemouth workers know that the anti-oil and gas sentiment from the SNP in Edinburgh and Labour in London has been fatal.”

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he and the First Minister shared a “deep frustration” with Petroineos over its decision to close the refinery, despite attempts to keep it open.

But he added: “Governments have known of the company’s intentions for five years but failed to put plans in place.

“But over the past seven months the UK and Scottish governments have worked collaboratively to deliver the Falkirk and Grangemouth Growth Deal, joint working on Project Willow and joint attempts to secure incomes for workers for the next 18 months.”

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His projections account for recent advances in AI and data center efficiency, he says. For example, the open-source AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek seems to have shown that an LLM can produce very high-quality results at a very low cost with some clever architectural changes to how the models work. These improvements are likely to be quickly replicated by other AI companies. “A lot of these companies are trying to push out more efficient models,” says Fung. “There’s a lot of effort to reduce costs and to make it more efficient.” In addition, hyperscalers are designing and building their own chips, optimized for their AI workloads. Just the accelerator market alone is projected to reach $392 billion by 2029, Dell’Oro predicts. By that time, custom accelerators will outpace commercially available accelerators such as GPUs. The deployment of dedicated AI servers also has an impact on networking, power and cooling. As a result, spending on data center physical infrastructure (DCPI) will also increase, though at a more moderate pace, growing by 14% annually to $61 billion in 2029. “DCPI deployments are a prerequisite to support AI workloads,” says Tam Dell’Oro, founder of Dell’Oro Group, in the report. The research firm raised its outlook in this area due to the fact that actual 2024 results exceeded its expectations, and demand is spreading from tier one to tier two cloud service providers. In addition, governments and tier one telecom operators are getting involved in data center expansion, making it a long-term trend.

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Medical training’s AI leap: How agentic RAG, open-weight LLMs and real-time case insights are shaping a new generation of doctors at NYU Langone

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Patient data records can be convoluted

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This article is part of VentureBeat’s special issue, “The cyber resilience playbook: Navigating the new era of threats.” Read more from this special issue here.

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This article is part of VentureBeat’s special issue, “The cyber resilience playbook: Navigating the new era of threats.” Read more from this special issue here.

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