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Thematic Article
The Grangemouth oil refinery closure: lessons for ‘just transition’ governance
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Abstract
In November 2023, Petroineos announced the closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery at Grangemouth by 2025. Grangemouth is widely perceived as a ‘litmus test’ for the Scottish Government’s commitment to a ‘just transition’ for workers in the oil and gas industry to steer them on an orderly movement towards suitable employment in green energy production. The announcement came as a shock and disrupted just transition planning developed in Scotland since the late 2010s. Power imbalances between Petroineos and the Scottish Government and the workforce and trade unions demonstrate the difficulties of organising transition in a sector dominated by large multinationals subject to minimal accountability or transparency. This paper demonstrates the value of historically, economically and politically grounded policy analysis for achieving net zero. It assesses the Grangemouth closure announcement, focusing on governance mechanisms, UK, Scottish and local policy coordination, transparency and long-term planning challenges, particularly for net zero, energy policy, renewables and deindustrialisation. This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The critical role of governance for decarbonisation at pace: learning the lessons from SHAPE research’, edited by Sarah Birch, Hilary Graham, Andrew Jordan, Tim O’Riordan, Henry Richards.
Keywords
just transitionoilrefineryScotlandnet zeroenergy policyrenewablestrade unionsGrangemouthdeindustrialisationIntroduction
In November 2023, Petroineos announced the closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery at Grangemouth by 2025. Grangemouth came to be regarded as a ‘litmus test’ for Scottish Government commitments to a ‘just transition’ towards a green economy (Allan 2023). The future of oil and gas workforces, and their communities which are highly integrated with the industry, have been defining features of Scottish debates over net zero. Dissonance between planning objectives and policy frameworks on the one hand, and the reality of corporate decision-making over Grangemouth on the other, has consolidated worker doubts about the efficacy of employment and social transition governance in Scotland. This paper uses a historically informed approach to understand the political and economic challenges of net-zero governance. These are made more complex in the context of devolved polities such as Scotland which are rich in both carbon and renewable energy sources. Whilst highly relevant to other devolved nations and regions within the UK, the findings also have application to oil and gas territories in other countries navigating the challenges of transition, such as the Canadian state of Alberta (Williams & Doyon 2020: 291). This paper explores how Grangemouth reveals the difficulties of just transition planning for devolved governments. It analyses how power imbalances between the Scottish Government and Grangemouth’s multinational owners create tensions, which undermine commitments to a just transition. Governance mechanisms, policy coordination, transparency and long-term planning are identified as crucial challenges.
The refinery closure announcement, which includes plans to convert the site into a fuel import terminal and shed around 400 out of 500 jobs, reveals conflicts between energy transition planning and structures of corporate power and incentives. Grangemouth has been central to the formulation of just transition policy in Scotland. In June 2023, less than half a year before the closure announcement, the Scottish Parliament’s Economy and Fair Work Committee (2023: 12) reported on an inquiry into Grangemouth which had defined just transition as requiring ‘workforce planning [which] must provide a clear picture of what the new energy economy will look like to identify opportunities and skills which will be in demand and where jobs will be located’. Yet Petroineos, the refinery’s owner, refused to engage with the inquiry, leaving politicians and policymakers with a highly restricted view of what the future would hold.
In Scotland, just transition has been closely integrated with achieving net zero. The Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act Emissions Reduction Targets set an ambitious net-zero emissions target of 2045 and legislated a set of just transition principles through which these would be enacted:
(A)
Supports environmentally and socially sustainable jobs.
(B)
Supports low-carbon investment and infrastructure.
(C)
Develops and maintains social consensus through engagement with workers, trade unions, communities, non-governmental organisations, representatives of the interests of business and industry and such other persons as the Scottish Ministers consider appropriate.
(D)
Creates decent, fair and high-value work in a way which does not negatively affect the current workforce and overall economy.
(E)
Contributes to resource-efficient and sustainable economic approaches which help to address inequality and poverty.
These principles underline that procedural and substantive dimensions of justice are central to achieving a just transition. Multi-party dialogue, especially through the involvement of workers and trade unions, along with industry and government, is essential. Trusting relationships are needed to secure the compromises and commitments necessary for investment in sustainable activities which reprise the skills, capacities and infrastructures already concentrated at locations such as Grangemouth.
In September 2024, Petroineos confirmed their intention to go ahead with the closure, despite increasing activity from both the Scottish and UK Governments following the election of a Labour UK Government in July. In a joint statement by the UK and Scottish Governments, Ed Miliband, the incoming UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, underlined it was ‘deeply disappointing that Petroineos have confirmed their previous decision to close Grangemouth oil refinery’. His Scottish Government counterpart, Gillian Martin, concurred ‘that together we have communicated our disappointment to Petroineos today’ (Scottish Government 2024). These responses demonstrate the difficulty of achieving just transition by ensuring that replacement employment utilising skills is developed in hydrocarbons locally without a ‘jobs gap’ period which obliges temporary or permanent immigration of workers and communities to experience either unemployment or less rewarding or insecure employment. Those challenges are exacerbated by a context in which government operates essentially reactive policies or at least ones which remain structured around the agency of private investors. Grangemouth poses a huge challenge, with 2822 jobs dependent on the refinery, concentrated in the immediate vicinity of Grangemouth, Falkirk and Bo’ness. The 532 direct employees at the refinery enjoy wages almost one and a half times average earnings in the area, but a PwC (2024: 4) analysis for the Scottish Government concluded that ‘these relatively well-paid technical jobs may not be easily replaceable in the local economy’. The UK and Scottish Government response included announcing a £100 million funding package for the Falkirk local authority area, but this is a fraction of the costs that inducing new economic activity will demand. It provides for retraining refinery workers, many of whom are already highly skilled, but does not indicate any concrete plans for retaining and expanding industrial activity before the refinery closes (Scottish Government 2024).
Petroineos had already undermined the workforce’s faith in employer and policymaker commitments to a future of green industry by making the unexpected closure announcement. During an interview recorded with the authors in 2024, speaking in the context of disappointment, a Grangemouth worker articulated their own understanding of just transition through the mutual obligations of a ‘social contract’ between workers, government and employers:
If an employer can transition, then they should have a responsibility to do that responsibly, taking workers with them. There’s a bit of a social contract there, look after your workforce, et cetera. The government ultimately need to create an environment for employers to be able to do that, and government need to make sure that happens.
A context and background section follows before an analysis of the Scottish Government’s just transition policy framework in relation to Grangemouth, emphasising transition governance mechanisms developed around the complex; the effectiveness of policy coordination between devolved and central government; problems around corporate transparency; and long-term planning. The report draws on proceedings from parliamentary committees and Scottish Government plans along with findings from eight interviews conducted with Grangemouth workers after the closure announcement during the early months of 2024. During these discussions, workers reflected critically on Scottish Government policymaking, drawing attention to what they say saw as the absence of concrete proposals which capitalise on the site’s infrastructures and their skills. This builds on and contributes to findings by oil researchers such as Houeland & Jordhus-Lier (2022: 522–43) who found that in Norway, workplace union representatives tended to eschew agency and responsibility for the transition. In the context of impending closure, Grangemouth workers articulated an alternative frustrated sense of having been denied the agency to enact a transition based on new industrial activity and retaining jobs.
Context and background
Grangemouth sits between Glasgow and Edinburgh with a population of around 16,000 people. It hosts one of just six remaining oil refineries in the UK. Grangemouth is also at the centre of one of six major carbon-intensive clusters in Britain, alongside South Wales, Humberside, Merseyside, Southampton and Teesside (Upham et al. 2022). Learning from decision-making at Grangemouth is valuable for managing the transition out of high-carbon polluting activities in strategic regions across Britain. Sustained interest in Grangemouth by Scottish policymakers also illuminates the role which devolved governments can play during the transition of major carbon economy clusters. Besides refining, Grangemouth has implications for other carbon-intensive activities with relevance to devolved governments, especially the future of the North Sea oil and gas sector. Another prominent example is the transition of Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales. Once again, a large multinational, in this case Tata, has faced a devolved government and, as at Grangemouth, different outlooks between the devolved and UK governments have been exposed (Gething 2024).
Grangemouth refinery opened under BP in 1924 before ownership transferred to INEOS in 2005 (Shibe 2025). In 2011, INEOS formed the Petroineos partnership with the Chinese state-owned oil company, PetroChina (INEOS n.d. a). Petrochemical plants as well as the Kinneil Terminal, which connects Grangemouth to North Sea oil production through the Forties Pipeline System (FPS), are clustered around the refinery. The complex is a focal point for large supply chains and infrastructures, which have major implications for the performance of the regional economy and labour market in Central Scotland (Allan 2023; Scottish Government 20 September 2023; Climate Change Committee 2020: 4, 20). Grangemouth was responsible for 6 per cent of Scotland’s net greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 (Scottish Government 20 September 2023), and emissions from businesses in the town—including not just the refinery but also plastics, pharmaceuticals, renewables and waste treatment companies—amounted to a third of Scottish emissions produced by companies (Falkirk Council 2020; Scottish Government 20 September 2023: 8). The cluster was singled out by the UK Climate Change Committee (2020: 27) as a central node of fossil fuel production ‘that will continue to pollute until effective measures to decarbonise them are put in place’.
Over the late 2010s to early 2020s, Scottish transition governance developed through a series of climate change strategies and legislative changes (Cunningham 2019). Scotland was the first nation to establish a Just Transition Commission (JTC), an independent government advisory body consisting of academic commissioners as well as energy sector union officials and industry experts (Scottish Government n.d.). The Scottish transition context is heavily informed by a history of industrial job losses in the late 20th century. In its final report published in 2021, the first JTC, which was then succeeded by a newly appointed second Commission, underscored mass unemployment in coal and steel communities as a lesson for ‘how not to manage structural change’ (Scottish Government 23 March 2021: 22). Richard Lochhead, Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work, responded to the report by emphasising that ‘our former coal-mining communities still bear the scars of rapid, unplanned change. That cannot happen again’ (Scottish Government 7 September 2021: 3–7). The ministerial response formalised a just transition planning framework, which emphasised distributive justice as part of a co-design planning process (Scottish Government 7 September 2021: 34). So far, the JTC has not had the impact on policymaking or outcomes it would have wished for over half a decade. A frustrated tone as well as a stark warning on five years of failure along with the extent of the difficulty and power imbalance associated with the refinery closure was communicated by the Commission in its Grangemouth report, which was published in July 2024:
Five years of policymaking on this agenda has not developed sufficiently to require high carbon emitters to deliver a just transition as standard practice. As we stated in our annual report: the current path will not deliver. The limitations of collective efforts to date are nowhere more clearly in evidence than at Grangemouth, which presents an acute challenge for applying a just transition approach, given the central role of a privately owned company and foreign state-owned enterprise, and the associated difficulties in setting conditions and implementing effective mechanisms for open dialogue about the site’s future (Just Transition Commission 18 July 2024: 5).
These comments demonstrate how Grangemouth epitomises the larger Scottish just transition governance in microcosm: there has been extensive consultation and discussion but minimal concrete planning or steps to create accountability between transition partners. A privately-owned corporation and foreign state-owned enterprise remain the key agents, and their decisions are not subject to impactful accountability or scrutiny by the Commission or planned for effectively in energy and industrial policymaking frameworks. Whilst Grangemouth has been a key focus for just transition strategy, these deliberations did not anticipate the closure announcement, nor do they hold out a way forward which retains employment at the complex. Petroineos’ announcement highlighted the failure of the Scottish just transition planning framework to meet its aims (Allan 2023). Furthermore, the developments of the Scottish Government’s plans underline the power imbalances between the key actors in achieving a just transition, especially multinational enterprises on the one hand and devolved administration and workers on the other. Neither is Petroineos subject to public accountability, creating greater dissonance between government-led planning and corporate decision-making. The following sections assess the efficacy of the just transition planning framework, considering governance mechanisms, policy coordination between the UK, Scottish and local governments, transparency and long-term planning.
Governance mechanisms
The Scottish Government has established local planning mechanisms specifically oriented towards transitioning the Grangemouth cluster. In 2020, the Scottish Government established the Grangemouth Future Industry Board (GFIB) to recognise Grangemouth as key to delivering a just transition and achieving net zero. The GFIB aimed ‘to coordinate public sector initiatives on growing economic activity at the Grangemouth industrial cluster, whilst supporting its transition to our low-carbon future’ (Scottish Government 16 December 2020: 228).
Grangemouth also occupied a dominant role in the Scottish Government’s Draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan, which was published in January 2023. It included hopeful projections of the central role that the site could play in carbon capture and storage and hydrogen objectives through Grangemouth’s skill base and location in pipeline systems. Grangemouth’s just transition planning mechanisms, through the GFIB, was singled out as a significant pathway which set a promising example to be followed by future developments in other carbon-intensive clusters (Scottish Government 10 January 2023: 8–14, 117).
In June 2023, the Scottish Parliament’s Economy and Fair Work Committee published its Inquiry into a Just Transition to Net Zero for the Grangemouth Area to ‘support, incentivise and de-risk this transition in a way that benefits both companies and individuals’ (2023: 8). The Scottish Government then published a Discussion Paper outlining a Just Transition Plan for Grangemouth in September 2023, incorporating recommendations from the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Published just seven weeks before the refinery closure announcement, this paper intimated no knowledge of the forthcoming announcement, which was highly disruptive to its objectives. The paper suggested bio-based manufacturing, and hydrogen and carbon capture and storage could build on the existing skills base, but it was relatively minimal on details, planning and the process of transition (Scottish Government 20 September 2023: 8–9). Process is crucial through establishing mechanisms of consultation and discussion, which prepare government, industry and the workforce to act collectively and agree future action. Effective planning requires preparing linked but diffuse activities, such as investment in plant, infrastructure development and workforce retraining.
Experiences of disappointment with the existing mechanisms, and their distance from the workings of the complex, were strong themes during our interviews. Dissonance between the planning objectives and the reality of decision-making over Grangemouth has consolidated worker doubts about the efficacy of the governance structures formed around just transition policymaking. One interviewee gave a one-word answer—‘sceptical’—when asked about how they felt about discussions on a just transition in Scotland. Another worker who has been employed at Grangemouth for around ten years, explained they were largely unaware of the just transition discussion. They further expressed surprise upon recently learning about the GFIB, which they felt had been marked by its absence and inactivity, despite the clear need for it in achieving a more diverse and greener manufacturing base:
I’ve heard about it, and to be honest like I say I’ve heard plenty talk about it. And up until I suppose 2020, when we first saw the real downturn in the refinery, I mean, these will be just headlines I read in a paper and I would just probably pass over it, I have obviously started taking a wee bit more interest, although, like I say, the majority of workers at Grangemouth were not well versed. They maybe will be now, given what’s going on.
But I know of course there’s this Grangemouth Future Industry Board. Yeah, I was absolutely shocked to see in light of the announcement, that’s been meeting for a number of years. We don’t know who was on it, we don’t know what they were discussing. And for me, that inaction is absolutely unbelievable.
Policy coordination
Grangemouth had been a focal point for discussions over power and justice in Scotland’s energy sector for decades prior to the contemporary policy debate around a just transition. These dynamics became evident following a major industrial dispute between INEOS and Unite, the main union at the complex, over pensions in 2013. In the aftermath, terms and conditions worsened, pay was frozen and union presence and strength were reduced (Lyon 2017). Several of our interviewees mentioned the dispute as a major flashpoint, recalling how skilled workers left Grangemouth after job fairs being held in the town by oil companies offering lucrative terms and conditions in the Middle East.
Both the Scottish and UK Governments were compelled to respond to the dispute in terms which demonstrated the difficulties of negotiating with a large multinational which controls infrastructure in an essential sector. INEOS’s self-authored history underlines that in 2013 its Chief Executive Officer, Jim Ratcliffe, decided that ‘the site, of vital importance to the Scottish economy, and one of the few large manufacturing employers left in the country, would close’; closure was averted when ‘the unions caved in, and Ratcliffe rescinded the decision’ (Ratcliffe et al. 2023: 5). The distribution of power within the two Petroineos parents accentuates governance challenges. On the one hand, Ratcliffe is the majority shareholder of INEOS, a private limited company as opposed to a publicly listed one (INEOS n.d. b). Contrastingly, PetroChina is a state-owned enterprise answerable only to the Chinese Government. These forms of ownership create distinctive challenges to establishing relationships conducive to societal and environmental benefits (British Academy 2021: 29–31). In neither case is management accountable towards the Grangemouth workforce or aligned with Scottish Government objectives to achieve a just transition. Petroineos is typical in the British energy sector, though, particularly in oil and gas, where foreign state-owned enterprises and private limited companies make up a large proportion of North Sea licence owners (Linders 2023).
Following an attempt to find a buyer for the plant ( Reuters 2013) to resolve the crisis, the Scottish Government worked with the UK Government and INEOS to secure a long-term future for Grangemouth. In the summer of 2014, the UK Government provided a £230 million loan guarantee, and the Scottish Government contributed £8 million to support investment in a new ethylene storage tank. INEOS described this state support as ‘crucial’, demonstrating the potential for coordinated action by UK and devolved administrations in cases involving the scale of investment required for transition at Grangemouth. Conversely, the reception of the support by INEOS demonstrated tensions between administrations when hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) in onshore gas deposits in Scotland was subject to a moratorium by the Scottish Government, a decision which the UK Government opposed ( Inch Magazine 2016). Even instances of relatively successful coordination have been marked by the complexities due to poor working relations with INEOS, given differences in interests and incentives. Political friction between UK and Scottish administrations could remain a threat to combined working, which corporate interests may exploit.
Transparency
Scottish just transition governance frameworks suffer from a lack of clarity with regard to stated political objectives at both Scottish and UK levels. In recent years, the Scottish Government has been non-committal in its policy objectives regarding the future of North Sea oil and gas licencing and hence to the rate of pace in transition. Then First Minister Humza Yousaf stated early in 2024 that ‘there can be no “cliff-edge” to oil and gas production, but rather a partnership that delivers a genuine just transition’ (Scottish National Party 19 February 2024). This stance amounted to arguing against Labour’s proposed ban on licences, but Yousaf himself also signalled his own opposition to new licences being granted by the then Conservative UK Government (Thomas 2024). The new UK Government’s preferences also remain ambiguous. As Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband had committed that ‘under Labour, the British people will own things again, build things again, profit as a country from these investments again’ (Labour Party 2023). However, the emergent GB Energy’s exact purpose remains ambiguously pivoted between public ownership and leadership in the sector on the one hand or primarily ‘derisking’ for private investors on the other (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero 2024).
The refinery workforce and community have experienced precarity and instability at the behest of business decisions, compounded by the fact that the Scottish Government has faced its own challenges operating within a scope largely determined by Petroineos, a company with minimal public accountability. This has been a major source of contention for both the workforce and the Scottish Government. Our interviewees did underline instances of investment in the site by its current owners, which in their eyes stood in contrast to BP’s loss of interest during the 2000s. However, these investments have not been painless, even since the major shock of 2013. Further restructuring took place at the refinery during the COVID-19 pandemic when Petroineos made 200 redundancies at the refinery, resulting from the closure of a Crude Oil Distillation Unit and a Catalytic Cracking Unit ( Scottish Financial Review 2020). One interviewee recalled this as a moment where the workforce demonstrated commitment, but felt that this had not since been adequately reciprocated by either the owners or government:
In 2020, we were told by our managers and by some senior managers that the place was going to be the industrial heart of Scotland. They were investing money. INEOS had promised they were going to invest a £1 billion into a new biorefinery. They said they were going to build a new power station, and they’d said they were going to spend all this money, and this was going to be the new green future of Scotland. We were actually swayed by some of the managers not to leave. We were told not to leave and not to go to other companies like Mossmorran or not to go offshore because this was where the workforce would be needed.1
A different interviewee summarised that the workforce was thoroughly committed to the site: ‘I was happy to stay in Grangemouth and work in Grangemouth, as were most of the people in Grangemouth.’ Local employment was central to determining the meaning of a just transition in all our interviews. Workers who remain at Grangemouth chose not to leave after 2013 to work offshore or abroad. Yet now some are considering leaving. One interviewee mentioned that their entire team were weighing up moves to refineries or other energy sectors in Asia and Australia.
Both workers’ commitment to Grangemouth, and their willingness to transition to local green jobs under comparable conditions, points towards a key strength which should be more strongly harnessed in organising transition at major industrial sites. Mutual government and workforce interest holds out the potential for entering long-term committed relationships with industry. Ensuring unions are regarded as crucial stakeholders at the outset by initiatives such as the GFIB would strengthen these relationships. Such an approach must also consider unions as large hierarchical organisations, securing engagement appropriately with senior officers and paid officials, but also with workplace representatives. The JTC has adopted this position in its work, which demonstrates the potential for further embedding this approach in Scottish policymaking (Just Transition Commission 2024: 20–6).
By contrast, INEOS’s selective engagement with mechanisms set up to manage Scotland’s transition presents a fundamental challenge. The company refused to appear before the Scottish Parliament and Fair Work Committee’s Inquiry into a Just Transition to Net Zero for the Grangemouth Area in 2023, during the months before the refinery closure announcement was made. This nonengagement was described in the Committee’s report as ‘a missed opportunity for INEOS to set out, on the parliamentary record, the work it is now doing to contribute to Scotland’s net zero targets and enable appropriate parliamentary scrutiny of this work’ (Scottish Parliament and Fair Work Committee 2023: 2). Similar approaches are though likely to be repeated by the large but relatively unaccountable corporations which dominate the energy sector.
Policies that ensure transparency and maximise engagement with stakeholders on a multi-level party basis can act to mitigate these risks, but they are magnified by the imbalance in power, geographical reach and economic resources between large multinationals and devolved governments. Collaboration between local, Scottish and UK governments can further help to reinforce planning efficacy and achieve meaningful commitment from unions and industry. Unite, through its ‘Keep Grangemouth Working’ campaign, has also drawn attention towards questions over transparency in discussions between the Scottish Government and Petroineos.2 Concerns over when the Scottish Government first knew of plans to close the refinery grew following reports suggesting restructuring plans might have been shared with a minister in February 2022 (Landin 2024). The JTC’s recommendation that ‘all public money/subsidy deployed to support the transition at Grangemouth must come with conditionalities linked to just transition’ will help to allay such fears and establish a coherent basis for transition policy (Just Transition Commission 2024: 11).
Long-term planning
The Scottish Government’s just transition planning framework has focused on overarching principles, but has proven less adept in maintaining concrete commitments. This was demonstrated in April 2023 when the Scottish Government abandoned its 75 per cent emission reduction target for 2030, having missed eight out of twelve annual targets (Scottish Parliament 2024: 60–74). INEOS has underlined its commitment to a ‘Grangemouth Renaissance’ as part of the ‘journey to net zero’ by 2045. One important component of these developments was the announcement of a New Energy Plant powered by locally produced hydrogen and linked to Scottish Cluster carbon capture and storage infrastructure (INEOS 2022). The German energy company, RWE, is also working with INEOS to develop a green hydrogen facility to be operational by 2029. Sopna Surrey, RWE’s Chief Operating Officer for hydrogen, cited the Scottish Government’s just transition aims when announcing the project: ‘This project at Grangemouth aligns with the Scottish Government’s vision for a “just transition”, putting Scotland at the forefront of the green revolution while protecting jobs and decarbonising Grangemouth’ ( Energy Voice 2024).
These decisions do not have a clear relationship to the just transition planning framework. A meaningful framework requires substantive commitments and agreements which are consistently sustained by partners, but it also needs to be flexible enough to react to changes in timetables or sudden instances of major investment or disinvestment. When decisions like the announced refinery closure have an adverse impact, it creates instability, discouraging workers to remain at Grangemouth. Furthermore, such announcements undermine the credibility held by Scottish Government just transition plans, which have been based on prior assumptions that the refinery would not be imminently closed (Scottish Government 20 September 2023). Unite has emphasised the threat of a jobs gap, even if the RWE investment and other projects create new employment in the 2030s.3
In July 2024, following the election of the new Labour UK Government, the UK and Scottish Governments developed a new cooperation project around Grangemouth. Ed Miliband met with Scottish ministers and announced that, as part of these plans, he would be co-chairing the GFIB’s Leadership Forum.4 Both governments are supporting a £1.5 million report investigating alternative options for the site (Lockhart 2024). These developments hold out hope that structures which were established under devolved leadership can be reinvigorated with coordinated political support from London and Edinburgh.
Conclusions and recommendations
The Grangemouth refinery closure demonstrates the difficulties of planning a major carbon/energy transition, especially of achieving an orderly movement between sectors, which maintains local jobs in areas characterised by skilled employment in hydrocarbons. These challenges are made even more difficult in scenarios where public control is second to corporate decision-making and where policy frameworks remain ambiguous in strategic intent between a just transition on the one hand and derisking for private capital on the other. Document analysis and findings from interviews with Grangemouth workers demonstrate how historically grounded social science research approaches can illuminate the challenges inherent to net zero governance.
Net zero planning mechanisms have failed to deliver concrete investment into the plant, with workers experiencing dissonance between these plans and the reality of decision-making at the refinery. Motivations and incentives of employers are often at odds with stated government priorities, further undermining successful implementation of just transition planning. Plans also lack transparency in terms of stakeholder engagement as well as substantive, concrete commitments and flexible timelines. Without consideration of these elements, not only is net zero strategy compromised, but workforces and communities at the centre of energy production are disrupted, frustrated and inclined towards doubt and disengagement from any future more meaningful initiatives.
The experience of just transition planning at Grangemouth presents four important generalisable recommendations.
Firstly, Grangemouth demonstrates the potential for coordinated policymaking. Structures formed by devolved government, like the GFIB, can shape the direction of planning, as demonstrated by Ed Miliband heading the GFIB Leadership Forum. The new spirit of collaboration in the summer of 2024 also indicates, as has earlier experience at Grangemouth, that coordination between UK and devolved administrations will be necessary to achieve a just transition, especially where this involves negotiating with large multinationals. Yet these arrangements have also been demonstrated to be inherently limited when it comes to key decisions over the future of the refinery and the timing of replacements.
Secondly, transparency in relationships with corporate owners is crucial, and so is transparency being seen to be practised. This is likely to be particularly challenging with companies like INEOS and PetroChina who are exposed to comparatively minimal structures of accountability within the UK. Transparency, in the forms of openness, trust and timeliness, nonetheless remains essential for achieving a just transition and retaining community and workforce support.
Thirdly, good just transition governance should centrally involve workplace representatives and union officials in structures of consultation and decision-making. This is partially a lesson drawn from negative experiences, given the combination of corporate power and workers’ perception of exclusion from crucial decisions and governance bodies at Grangemouth. However, the activities of the JTC and the reinvigoration of the GFIB create further potential to implement equitable changes.
Finally, concrete medium-term and long-term planning are essential for retaining workers’ confidence in the transition and ensuring sustained commitments from industry and government. Grangemouth and comparable sites like Port Talbot enjoy a high level of worker loyalty. At Grangemouth, our respondents also demonstrated a willingness to transition and retrain for low-carbon local employment where pay and conditions are comparable to present levels. Harnessing these important strengths relies upon creating a clearly agreed pathway in advance of major changes. Instead, some Grangemouth workers have found themselves planning an unwanted exit and even emigrating in the face of a prolonged period of uncertainty which has followed the closure announcement. These distinctions demonstrate the crucial dynamics of governance, and the close relationship between procedural and outcome dimensions of achieving a just transition.
Acknowledgements
The thumbnail image that accompanies this article is “Grangemouth oil refinery December 2011” by Guinnog, licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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1
Mossmorran is Scotland’s other major petrochemicals complex. It is located in Fife, across the Forth from Grangemouth.
2
Keep Grangemouth Working tweet 7.53 am, 29 April 2024, X. https://x.com/GrangemouthJobs/status/1784838465739161632.
3
Keep Grangemouth Working tweet 8.20 am, 21 June 2024, X. https://x.com/GrangemouthJobs/status/1804051825185673486.
4
Ed Miliband tweet 6.03 pm, 12 July 2024, X. https://x.com/Ed_Miliband/status/1811808535459566005.
Cite
DOI: 10.5871/jba/013.a11
Published on: 20 March 2025
Volume: 13
Issue: Issue 1
Article view count: 663
Article download count: 33
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© The author(s) 2025. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Shibe, R. & Gibbs, E. (2025), ‘The Grangemouth oil refinery closure: lessons for “just transition” governance’, Journal of the British Academy, 13(1): a11 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/013.a11Crossref
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October 2022
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July 2023
Language at school: literature or linguistics? Richard Hudson
This opinion piece argues that the education system in England suffers from a lack of KAL (Knowledge About Language) which is so extreme that it deserves the name KAL desert because children are taught virtually nothing about the languages that they study, whether English or a foreign language. The dominant view of language sees it merely as a skill, rather than as something interesting which is worth exploring, and the only content taught and tested in language lessons comes from literature rather than linguistics. This desert is to be found not only in our schools but also in our university departments of English and of foreign languages, so future teachers of English and foreign languages are not equipped to teach about language; modern linguistics has very little impact on the school curriculum apart from the Advanced Level exam in English Language. I also show that the present decline in both English and foreign languages actually started about 1970, and may arguably be due in part to the KAL desert. However, I also report evidence from three recent initiatives that a lot of children enjoy exploring language and learning about it, so I suggest that the decline in languages, both English and foreign, might be halted by teaching more KAL. Finally, I suggest a roadmap for achieving this by increasing KAL first in universities and then in schools.
15 July 2024
The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—introduction Isobel Armstrong
This kaleidoscope of short pieces derives from two Fellows Engagement Week sessions (2022, 2023) in which speakers from across the British Academy—Theatre Studies, Anthropology, Modern History, History of Science, English, Philosophy, Music—gave ten-minute talks on the civic value of the arts and humanities. The British Academy’s SHAPE acronym, answering the Royal Society’s STEM formulation, understandably stresses the economic importance of arts and humanities in today’s challenging technological world (E is for Economy). The remit of this forum, however, was to remake and reclaim arguments for the civic importance of arts and humanities, recognising that accounts of the arts are often based on 19th-century arguments that no longer have force today. Three themes emerge from this forum: the importance of collaboration, the non-instrumental significance of aesthetic experience, and the centrality of language to civic life. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)
10 September 2024
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