Union representatives and climate groups have asked the Chancellor, ahead of the Autumn Budget, to ring-fence funding to aid the transition to cleaner jobs in the energy sector and upskill workers.
A total of 65 organisations have signed a letter calling for investment in the UK wind manufacturing sector and funding to augment the skills of oil and gas workers, which was delivered to the Treasury at a rally today.
The letter received strong cross-sector support from the energy industry as well as climate and activist groups.
Unite, the largest union for offshore oil and gas workers, was among companies to make the call, alongside industrial players such as Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union RMT and the Public and Commercial Services Union, together with the Scottish Trade Union Congress and the Trades Union Councils in Moray and Aberdeen.
They wrote to the Treasury in tandem with climate groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and energy transition campaign groups Oil Change International, Uplift, and Platform, to call for money to be invested in developing new jobs especially in the wind sector.
The UK has been a strong player in the development of wind power generation for many years, securing record-low prices for future offshore wind power at the 2022 national energy auction. But the market has traditionally relied on overseas manufacturing from companies such as Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems AS and Berlin-based Siemens, which merged with Spanish titan Gamesa to form Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA.
However, there are signs that the Labour government wants to change that. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has indicated that wind farms will be a key component of his government’s plans to shore up energy security by achieving net zero by 2030.
This will include support for onshore wind farms, which suffered from a lack of government support and funding under the Conservative government, as well as offshore wind.
Net Zero goals
Labour scrapped a policy that in effect constituted a ban on onshore wind farms in July, the same month that the party came to power, in one of the first policies that the new government has implemented providing a clear signal of how it will underscore its Net Zero goals.
This overturned nine years of stringent rules that hampered the UK’s onshore wind development, which were put in place by David Cameron’s Conservative government in 2015 prohibiting any onshore wind farm that received even a single objection from local communities.
Miliband previously criticised the last government’s failure to secure any new offshore wind capacity in 2023 at the national energy auction.
His government made moves to turn that around in September when the latest national energy auction procured approximately £1.5 billion of wind, solar and tidal energy projects, securing 10 GW of capacity through 131 projects.
Although a turnaround from 2023, this was still less capacity than secured in previous years, and analysts predict it is not enough to hit the government’s targets to quadruple offshore wind capacity from 15 GW to 60 GW by 2030.
Unions and climate groups alike have raised concerns that the government’s ambitious Net Zero targets are not achievable unless a concrete plan is put in place, a ‘UK-wide industrial strategy’ that prioritises public investment in domestic manufacturing, to transition the country to cleaner sources of energy.
In their letter to the Treasury, energy unions and climate groups warned that the ongoing closures of Grangemouth Oil Refinery and Port Talbot steelworks without plans to transition workers into secure green energy or green steel jobs is indicative of a failed approach.
‘Jobs supported by the oil and gas industry in the UK have more than halved over the past decade, with some 227,000 jobs lost since 2013,’ the letter said.
‘Without a strategy to deliver a just transition, and the public investment to back it up, the government is risking the future of workers, communities and the planet.’
“Pay heed”
Scottish TUC general secretary Roz Foyer said: ‘This letter from environmental groups is therefore hugely welcome. It highlights that trade unions and environmental groups are united in demanding an industrial strategy based on public investment in domestic manufacturing and publicly owned energy production. The UK government should pay heed.’
The letter called for £1.1 billion of investment per year in permanent jobs in the UK wind manufacturing sector, a move that is backed by Unite the Union.
In addition to calling to expand wind manufacturing industry in the UK, and to aid the transition of staff employed in the oil and gas sector to cleaner jobs, climate groups and trade unions have asked for an increase of £440 million a year funding to be channelled into upgrading the UK’s ailing ports.
They claim that this could help to alleviate bottlenecks in the green energy supply chain and suggest that government could look to take public or invest through equity stakes in national infrastructure to support the sector.
The organisations have also requested a further £355 million each year be invested in a fund that will retrain and upskill oil and gas employees with funding that could be matched by private companies, and paid for by employers to retrain their staff for the energy transition.
Unite the Union senior organiser Joe Rollin said: ‘Creating sustainable green jobs must be at the heart of the UK’s renewable energy strategy. We can’t allow a situation where North Sea workers face a cliff edge, with no skilled green jobs to go to while the UK becomes more reliant on importing fossil fuels.’