Threat of unjust transition to net zero is so real that I’m making common cause with diehard unionists – Kenny MacAskill

The ‘unjust transition’ ongoing in the North Sea is being well documented. Orders for turbines and other work are going abroad with neither the business nor the work benefiting Scotland. Unions and business have spoken out but now there’s a danger that what’s happening offshore will be replicated on land.

Let me explain. The largest source of emissions is now transport, hence the need to decarbonise vehicles. All good you’d think. After all, renewable energy will be flowing off our hills and seas. We’re already producing electricity and it can be converted into green hydrogen.

National Grid ESO anticipates 100 per cent of the UK’s green hydrogen coming from Scotland and production plants are planned. There’ll be a surplus which can be used locally and more widely than simply for the businesses it’s powering. So, running buses on either electricity or hydrogen makes sense: we’re going to need them. The energy’s going to be plentiful and it’s environmentally beneficial. So, where’s the problem?

An electric bus production line in a factory in Liaocheng in China's eastern Shandong province (Picture; STR/AFP via Getty Images)

China profiting

Well, it's as with the North Sea where it should be a virtuous circle of producing the energy to benefit our society and creating businesses and jobs. The energy is happening but not the economic benefits. It’s an unjust transition on land and sea.

The orders for buses which should be flowing into firms here and elsewhere in the UK are instead going abroad, and, in particular, to China. Now I welcome Chinese investment, whether at Grangemouth or into turbine manufacturing. But I don’t want it undermining our existing and indigenous industry. Yet that’s what’s happening.

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A recent big order for Transport for London was one of the latest to be placed in China. Not only is that a loss of what could be made here but it threatens our existing businesses. We can’t afford to see Alexander Dennis in Falkirk – or WrightBus in Northern Ireland or Switch Mobility in England – undermined.

This problem saw me making common cause last week in one of the final parliamentary debates with Ian Paisley of the DUP. He’s far from a natural ally and, on many issues, not just the constitution, we’re diametrically opposed. But he very ably made the case for developing what is cutting-edge technology, retaining skilled jobs and protecting communities where such factories are pivotal to the local economy. For him it’s Ballymena, for Scotland it’s Falkirk.

Just transition to net zero requires decisive action by Scottish Government – Satwat Rehman and Dave Reay

Scotland’s natural bounty

As he pointed out, the UK Government had pledged £312 million to fund the purchase of 2,270 zero-emission buses, which they said were “cleaner, greener, quieter, safer and more frequent”. There are 40,000 buses on our roads but only some 3,000 are currently zero-emission, as Paisley also said.

But he added: “Shamefully 46 per cent of those 2,270 buses will be manufactured outside the UK, principally by China.” It’s even suggested that, as with electric cars, China is deliberately flooding the market to undermine competition.

First electric double decker buses unveiled by Edinburgh operator Lothian

The situation’s not much better in Scotland. Economically we should be benefiting from our natural bounty and it’s environmentally absurd to import them thousands of miles across the oceans. A Brexit bonus was splashed across a bus, the reality as it stands seems it’s to be buses from China.

Kenny MacAskill is Alba MP for East Lothian