Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 15 December 2021
I will try to make some progress.
If we are to meet our climate targets, which are demanding—a 75 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2045—and also continue to secure jobs, we cannot pursue the maximum economic recovery of fossil fuels. As I mentioned, that view is shared by the International Energy Agency. Therefore, we need to have a sensible debate and a balanced discussion about how we can protect jobs and energy security, as well as ensure that we transition to net zero. Crucially, we must make that transition in a just way, so that no worker is left behind, as many were recently by both the UK and Scottish Governments when oil prices fell, leading to thousands of job losses. That means that we need to up our game in Scotland to properly translate green energy growth into high-quality, secure, well-paid jobs, which is something that, so far, the Government has failed to do.
Workers and trade unions are sick and tired of the constant references, which we see again in the Government’s complacent amendment to the motion, promising jam tomorrow and more talk about opportunities for jobs in the renewables sector. They have heard it all before—we all remember Alex Salmond promising those opportunities, saying that we would be the “Saudi Arabia of renewables”. A decade on from the SNP pledge in its low-carbon economy strategy of annual growth of 4 per cent a year to 130,000 green jobs by 2020, the number of people who are directly employed in the low-carbon and renewables economy is just 21,400, which is the lowest since 2014.