UK oil and gas workers remain skeptical of the ‘green jobs’ revolution.

Featured Sponsor

Store	Link	Sample Product
UK Artful Impressions	Premiere Etsy Store

In Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bainthe main character moves in the early 1980s to a desolate former mining community on the outskirts of Glasgow.

Stuart’s description of the local miners’ “pink hands that looked out of work” is reminiscent of the real-life fate of many British workers as major industries dwindled or disappeared entirely.

It is a description that has relevance today. Official climate advisers to the UK government on Wednesday urged politicians to heed lessons learned from the closure of coal mines and steel mills as the country seeks to reduce its dependence on oil and gas.

“Net Zero does not have to carry the same risks,” the Climate Change Committee said. A CCC paper suggests that the UK’s net zero emissions target for 2050 could add anything between 135,000 and 725,000 net new jobs if the government plays its cards right.

The problem is that oil and gas workers don’t share this optimism. In areas such as north-east Scotland, communities that depend on North Sea oil and gas for income and jobs fear they will do the same as former coal towns.

“There is a lot of concern among workers that there will be no future in either oil and gas or renewable energy,” said John Underhill, director of the University of Aberdeen’s Center for Energy Transition.

Making it easier for oil and gas workers to transition to low carbon energy industries is important not only for job security but also for ensuring that the UK has enough people with the right skills to help achieve its net zero goal.

A current obstacle is the cost of redevelopment, according to a recent report by campaign groups Platform London and Friends of the Earth Scotland.

Large integrated companies like BP move employees internally between oil and gas projects and wind projects. But for contractors who want to switch back and forth, retraining often has to be paid for out of pocket because industries have different accreditation bodies. This can be a particular source of frustration if workers feel there is duplication, unions say.

“Sometimes it’s £7,000 to get the various courses that might enable them to attend [wind] work,” said Jake Molloy, who worked on these problems for years for the RMT union.

Unions have long pushed for a “digital skills passport,” so workers don’t have to duplicate training unnecessarily. Training standards bodies insist they are working on it. Opito, the oil and gas standards group, said it and other groups involved hope to have the passport available “later this year”. But there have been reports of several vested interests creating blocks. Politicians must lobby until it is delivered.

Some oil and gas workers are also dubious about green job promises. They remain marred by years of overly optimistic forecasts. In 2010, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown estimated that the offshore wind industry would create 70,000 jobs by 2020. The most recent figures suggest the industry supports just under 20,000 ‘direct’ jobs and another 11,500 along the supply chain. RenewableUK, a trade body, says it expects total jobs to rise to 97,000 by 2030.

Critics of UK energy policy have complained for years, however, that most of the highly skilled wind generation work takes place overseas. Recognizing this, the UK government has been trying to attract more clean energy generation plants to low-tax ‘free ports’. The Scottish Government has a 10-year £500m ‘Just Transition’ fund to help develop the supply chain and boost home technologies. Requirements for companies to specify how to source more components locally are now included in processes such as seabed auctions.

Of course, not all oil and gas workers want change. Some point to lower wages in the clean energy sector as a disincentive.

But overcoming negative perceptions also has consequences for the next generation, said Underhill of the University of Aberdeen. The number of students studying geology at university level in the UK fell by nearly 10 per cent between 2014 and 2019, she added. This is the case despite the fact that such skills will be needed in new technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The optimistic forecasts on employment are very good. But the oil and gas communities have yet to be convinced that they are not destined for the same outcome described in Shuggie Bain if the UK is to meet its climate goals.