34: Focus on Aberdeen: the UK oil capital's just transition
Aberdeen has been the epicentre of UK oil and gas - and prospered as a result - since the 1970s. How can a community so steeped in fossil fuels engage successfully with a just transition? Becky and Matt are joined by Prof Tavis Potts from the University of Aberdeen, and Aberdeen Climate Action's Alison Stuart. Find us at www.localzeropod.com
Episode Transcript:
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Tavis: How do we make this fair and how do we make this work for everybody in the region? The transition has to be really democratic, broad, open and transparent not just for the energy elites.
Alison: If oil and gas companies still want to continue to pump out oil and gas knowing that our planet is dying because of it and that we, as a species, are going to die out, then you need to make it so that they have to pay huge amounts to make sure that carbon doesn’t go into our atmosphere.
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Matt: Hello and welcome to Local Zero. You’re listening to Matt and Becky and today, we’re talking all about the net zero transition happening in Aberdeen with two fabulous guests.
Rebecca: Yeah, later in the show, we’ll be chatting with Professor Tavis Potts from the University of Aberdeen and returning guest Alison Stuart, Director of Aberdeen Climate Action.
Matt: We’ll also consider what Aberdeen’s story means for folk living in other parts of the UK and the world where similar transitions are unfolding.
Rebecca: And we’ll be doing our very best to bring all this back to a practical focus of what we can all do to influence change; from taking on civic responsibilities like voting or writing letters to our representatives to things we can do in our communities and in our homes.
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Matt: So, as always, you can reach out to us on our dedicated Twitter handle. If you haven’t already, go and find and follow us @LocalZeroPod to get involved with discussions over there. Also, email us at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com if you want to share some longer thoughts.
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Rebecca: Before we get into our big ticket item discussion today, I think we’d better reflect back on what’s been happening over the last couple of weeks with one of my favourite parts of the show, the good, the bad and the plain old weird. Matt, you have been doing a lot of reading this week and uncovered an obscene number of stories that fit the bill here, haven’t you?
Matt: Yeah, another busy news week. It doesn’t seem like we ever have a quiet one. Gone is the silly season where they would fill the pages with pictures of Larry the cat at Number Ten and all the rest. I’m a keen gardener and I like getting out growing fruit and veg or whatever it is. I saw this fantastic story in The Guardian saying that the UK could potentially grow up to 40% of its own fruit and veg by using urban green spaces. Forget your farmland and put that to one side. Even if we just look at our cities, towns and villages, the green spaces there, whether that’s unused derelict land at the moment, gardens, parks or municipal space which maybe underutilised is 40%. Obviously, that’s a big number.
Rebecca: Huge!
Matt: What proportion, Becky, of the UK’s food in total do you think that we currently import?
Rebecca: Oh, that we currently important? That has got to be massive.
Matt: Now that’s not just fruit and veg. That’s the whole lot. That’s everything from your Ferrero Rocher to your chicken [laughter]. The whole lot.
Rebecca: I reckon it’s got to be a huge amount. It’s got to be over 50% surely.
Matt: Well, according to The Guardian article here, they’re suggesting that a third of the UK’s food in total is imported. However, that would be much higher if we were looking at fresh fruit and veg. They don’t put a number on it but it could be up as high as 50% and maybe we’ll defer to our listeners to correct us or fact check us as they see fit. Obviously, if we can cut into that, that’s great for our carbon emissions but also we’ve seen the supply chain come under particular strain after Brexit and also the pandemic. As we speak, there are massive lorry queues outside Dover. So yeah, it could mean better news for food security and a final quiz question on this...
Rebecca: Oh gosh! Alright, go on.
Matt: ...in terms of urban green space. Appetite for allotments at the moment is off the Richter scale. They’ve always been popular but even more popular with lockdown. What percentage of urban green space do you think is made up of allotments? This can be gardens, parks or playing fields.
Rebecca: 5%?
Matt: 1%.
Rebecca: 1%. Wow!
Matt: So it is low and thinking about a just transition, trying to tie reducing emissions and thinking about democratising ownership of land and what we do with that land to reduce emissions, what a great opportunity. That’s my good news article. What about yours?
Rebecca: Well, I just want to reflect because I love that for so many reasons. I started growing fruit and veg in my garden. We started doing that – goodness - it must have been at the start of the pandemic.
Matt: Good work.
Rebecca: We said, ‘Let’s try and do something at home.’ It is incredibly rewarding. I’m not like you, Matt. My family are not very skilled at this. I mean my husband does come from a line of farmers, so I kind of felt like we might have some hope with that but I certainly don’t. This was my first foray into growing fruit and veg. Our strawberries have been phenomenal. We tried to concentrate on things that we can’t afford to buy or that we don’t buy because they’re quite expensive in the supermarket.
Matt: Yeah, I think that’s a really good one and also those that have big air miles. Strawberries are a good example.
Rebecca: Yeah, strawberries. Unbelievable crop. Yeah, beautiful and they were absolutely delicious. Carrots were an absolute disaster. They should have been really, really easy and they were like these mutant things [laughter].
Matt: Don’t get me started on carrots, Becky, unless we want to turn the airwaves blue [laughter]. I’ve had some bad experiences. No, I think it’s a great thing to do and I’ve really enjoyed doing it with the kids as well. I think it’s another example of something that people can do and get fresh air, exercise, bond with friends and family and also be a bit greener and reduce emissions where they can. Yeah, I’m with you.
Rebecca: I think that’s an important point to come back to because I remember I got tricked during our COP26 recordings when I was playing the game How Bad are Bananas. It was a game based on the book How Bad are Bananas. I was asked whether I thought bananas imported from – I can’t remember which country it was in South America – would have higher carbon emissions or lower carbon emissions than tomatoes grown organically in the UK. Actually, the tomatoes grown organically in the UK were something like 42 times worse than the bananas in terms of carbon emissions because of hothousing. So I think that this is really, really exciting and presumably, if it’s allotment space, it won’t have the hothousing associated with it and it might encourage us all to eat a bit more seasonally as well which is very nice.
Matt: Quite right and don’t you have a good news story on bananas as well? [Laughter]
Rebecca: Yes, this brings me on to my good news story which is all about bananas [laughter] or rather not bananas. What are they called? The false banana. So our wonderful producer, Carys, highlighted this story to us and I have to say, I saw it and just got super excited because we love bananas and false bananas just sound even better. Most of us probably know this already and if we don’t, the CCC’s report (Climate Change Committee) tells us that we need to address the carbon emissions in the food that we’re eating. There is a staple food in Ethiopia which is called the false banana or often referred to as a wonder crop. I’m bound to be pronouncing this wrong. It’s actually called Enset and it’s used in Ethiopia as a staple part of their diet. It’s very similar to a banana and it’s much more like a starchy food that can be fermented to make things like porridge, bread and so on. Actually, it can really help with addressing climate emissions because it can be grown all over Africa and could support feeding the nation in a much more sustainable way.
Matt: So coming to a Tesco Metro near you.
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We’ve unfortunately got some bad news stories. The bad news keeps on rolling in with regards to energy prices. This is something that we will keep on returning to. I think listeners are probably very engaged with what’s happening and keen to understand how things are playing out. So I’ll begin with one. There was some really good commentary from Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans there about the impact of cutting the ‘green crap’ by David Cameron in 2013 and the impact upon energy efficiency obligations. This story is well worth reading and we’ll make sure we link to it. There was a related piece from ECIU (Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit) and they basically looked at how many homes we would have insulated if we hadn’t cut the ‘green crap.’ Have a guess. Just to understand how many households there are in the UK for starters, there are 28 million. How many households could we have insulated if we hadn’t have slashed the Energy Company Obligation in 2013, eight or nine years ago? How many more?
Rebecca: So of those 28 million households that all need insulation...
Matt: How many more would have had at least two measures? That could be loft insulation and cavity wall insulation.
Rebecca: Well, we don’t seem to be doing a very good job at getting those measures out. I don’t know but maybe a million of 28 million.
Matt: Nine million is what they’re suggesting.
Rebecca: Wow!
Matt: So nine million homes.
Rebecca: That’s huge!
Matt: People would say, ‘That’s a lot of homes. That’s like London.’ If you then ask the question what does that mean for my bills? Many of the listeners, I hope, will be familiar with energy performance certificates. Typically, if you sell a home, especially in Scotland, a house’s particulars will have your EPC attached to it. It tells you how energy efficient the home is on a scale from A down to...
Rebecca: G or something, yeah.
Matt: ...F or G. If you were in Band F, which is really bad and a bit like getting an F on your essay or something – it’s not good news [laughter] – and if you brought it up to Band C, which is kind of middling but it’s where we’re hoping to get most stuff to... it’s seen as a pretty decent position to be in, we would expect to see households today (if they had been one of those nine million that received efficiency measures) to have cut their gas bill by £400 a year...
Rebecca: Wow!
Matt: ...come April when the price cap goes up.
Rebecca: Which is absolutely huge.
Matt: That’s massive! That’s huge. That’s a down payment on something or a holiday. For many people, they’ll be looking and thinking, ‘That’s a good few food shops as well.’ That really hit me right between the eyes and I was thinking, ‘What have we done? Why are we scaling back these efficiency obligations?’ Becky, they’re still talking about cutting more ‘green crap’ to cut bills because bills are high. Bills are high because people’s homes are inefficient and gas prices are high.
Rebecca: I know and it’s this kind of short-term versus long-term thinking that really blows me away. I mean absolutely, we’re all struggling with our bills right now but it’s not just about tomorrow’s bill, is it? It’s not just about the bill that we’re paying today and tomorrow but it’s also about what we’re going to be paying the year after, the year after and the year after. More than that, how many people are also feeling cold in their homes or people that have non-renewable forms of heating suffering from the pollutants that we’re pouring out into our homes when we’re trying to heat them. We’ve got a wood burner in our living room because we just can’t keep this room warm otherwise but actually, putting that on... the particulates that are coming into my home and into my street and community... it’s really devastating.
Matt: I was cycling back from a meeting last night. I’m a trustee for a community environmental charity and I was coming back quite late last night and I couldn’t believe how bad the air quality was. I could see the air under the street lights and it wasn’t a foggy night. It was fairly breezy and you could smell the coal and you could smell the wood. You’re right. A lot of people will be reaching for these to keep their homes warm. We shouldn’t vilify them for wanting to keep their homes warm. That’s a much broader failure. It’s happening and I’d be fascinated to see the consumption of these things over this winter.
Rebecca: This links to one of your weird stories, Matt, doesn’t it? The idea of knocking off these green levies to reduce costs now but it’s having this kind of ongoing effect which links to one of your other stories.
Matt: Yeah, so I could have had this in the bad news but I think there is some merit to it and so I feel weird about it which is why it’s in the weird category [laughter]. I feel conflicted. It was Greg Jackson from Octopus Energy, who I think has done some fantastic stuff for the energy sector and really pushed the envelope in terms of innovating the energy company model. The BBC reported yesterday his open letter which was released suggesting that one of the ways to overcome this price crunch coming in April and another one in October when the price cap goes up again... remember, come October, we could see, on average, our dual fuel bills (electricity and gas) going up by £1,000 versus today. He’s quite right in saying that we need to do something about that. We can’t just swallow that or consumers can’t just swallow that and that actually, what we could do is just... it’s a bit like a mortgage and we could spread that cost over the years. Now that seems like a way of getting over this hump but it doesn’t solve the problem. The bulk of us are living in highly inefficient homes. My response to this is that’s a short-term solution but why couldn’t we be looking at doing something similar for energy efficiency with retrofit payments? If you spend £10,000 retrofitting your home, you could pay that off over ten years. There’s something in there or some value but it doesn’t solve the problem. Yeah, a real shocker but I think that probably brings us to a point where we’d like to hear a little bit more from our guests about local climate action. I think you’re really well situated, Becky, to talk a bit about this and framing why it’s so important. Obviously, we’re talking about Aberdeen and oil and gas transition. You’ve been involved with this a little bit, just before we speak to our guests.
Rebecca: Yeah, a very small amount. I mean anybody listening can tell that I’m not Scottish and I’m not from Aberdeen but many people will know that Aberdeen is quite a big hub of activity, particularly when it comes to the oil and gas sector in the UK. In fact, it is transitioning now to a hub of renewable activity. This is the hope with the transition plans for Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland. On the face of it, this is all very, very good and very exciting to have such a strong focus on this transition but to date, I think a lot of the discussion has been around the transition of the industry. What are these large oil and gas industries going to transition to? How are we going to see the growth of renewables in this area? What are we going to see in terms of jobs? I think, often, what we miss in these conversations is talking about the people that live in Aberdeen, their communities and the way it’s going to impact them, their lifestyles and their work opportunities and also the way in which they can have some sort of a voice and some sort of a say in what this future... effectively their neighbourhoods could look like.
Matt: Yeah, to understand that local response. I think it’s worth just framing that Aberdeen is potentially at the epicentre of a huge expansion of offshore wind in Scotland. We’ve just had the ScotWind leasing policy for offshore wind, some of it fixed which is literally fixed to the bottom of the sea or floating like a tethered barge or something akin to that. We’ve seen about 25 gigawatts. The two new reactors at Hinkley C will be about 3 gigawatts.
Rebecca: It’s a big amount.
Matt: A huge number and equivalent to nuclear power stations. Aberdeen is right in the middle of where much of this would be leased. I actually saw an announcement for Aberdeen Harbour welcoming this. Aberdeen Harbour obviously has been at the heart of the oil and gas boom over the years. I think we’ve got two fantastic guests to talk more about this and who are grappling with what the transition means, particularly for local people and, as I say, their lifestyles, identities and jobs.
Rebecca: Let’s bring them in.
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Tavis: Hi, everybody. My name is Tavis Potts. I’m Chair of Sustainable Development at the University of Aberdeen. I run the Just Transition Lab here and I’m the Interim Director of the Centre for Energy Transition. I’m a social science researcher working in environment and energy topics.
Alison: Hi, everybody. I’m Alison Stuart. I am the NESCAN Hub Manager. That’s the North East Scotland Climate Action Network. I also run Aberdeen Climate Action.
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Rebecca: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today, Alison and Tavis. Alison, it’s lovely to have you back on the show. I say ‘back on the show’ but I wasn’t actually part of the show that you recorded during COP26, so it’s really lovely to be chatting with you on Local Zero. We’re talking today about Aberdeen and a lot of the stuff that’s happening in your part of the world. For many people, they might be thinking, ‘Aberdeen? Where’s that? Up in Scotland? Why should we care? What’s going on there that’s so special?’ Alison, I know you’ve got really strong roots and connections to the community in Aberdeen, particularly through the NESCAN work. Could you just maybe outline for us what is going on in Aberdeen and why this is such an important part of the country to think about as we’re talking about the transition to net zero?
Alison: I’ll start with the second bit first. It’s really important that we look at Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire because obviously, we’re known as the oil and gas capital of Europe which is somewhat of a bit of pride for the people that live here. It’s very much a badge of identity. It’s really important that we get the transition right here and that we have a just managed transition not just for us in the region but for Scotland as a whole for our economy and for the whole world because we need a really good example to take forward to manage the transitions in other areas too. What’s going on here in Aberdeen? Well, there’s very much a concentration on energy transition, so going from an oil and gas capital to an energy capital but it doesn’t seem like there’s a huge transition from the companies that are actually involved. We have very much this discussion about oil and gas being part of the solution with greening the basin and blue hydrogen as opposed to a real transition to absolute net-zero energy sources. There’s a lot of good work in relation to skilling up going on. There is a lot of discussion about how we transition. Is there much action on the ground yet? Not entirely. We’ve got a lot of initiatives from business and politicians. For instance, Opportunity North East (ONE) is a group that all the funding in the region goes through which is a joint venture between Aberdeen the city, Aberdeenshire and Scottish Government... The Wood Foundation and that funding. There obviously is somewhat of a little bit of a bias to some degree in relation to oil and gas in my view. This is only my view. The same people are involved in the Energy Transition Zone. It’s a hive off of ONE. You then have what’s recently been renamed as the Net Zero Technology Centre which was the Oil and Gas Centre. They’re all doing quite similar jobs in relation to this whole idea of a transition to a new energy capital. That’s what is really happening here. In relation to communities though, the communities are trying to do it for themselves. There’s a lot of work, particularly in Aberdeenshire, within climate action groups to get to net zero in time, to retrofit, to have local energy supplies, to have wildlife-friendly villages, to provide food and reduce food waste which all ties into resilience. With Storm Arwen coming through as well, there’s a real knowledge that we have to work on adaption as well. Basically, that’s about how we deal with a changing climate.
Rebecca: My goodness me! Well, I think you’ve set us up for the entire episode with that introduction. It’s a hub of activity in so many different ways and we’re definitely going to drill into (pardon the pun) a load of those [laughter] in a bit more detail. I also want to reflect this back to you, Tavis, because you introduced yourself and anybody that heard that or anyone who knows you recognises that you come from halfway around the world. What pulled you to Aberdeen? Was it this hub of activity underway? Was it excitement about that or just some kind of bizarre chance?
Tavis: It was more the fact that I met my wife online and she was in Aberdeen and I was on the West Coast of Oban. That’s probably the reason why I’m here [laughter]. My background is in marine science and sustainability and so I actually was involved on the West Coast of Scotland at the Scottish Association for Marine Science where I headed up the Social Science Team there and looking at a lot of issues around energy and communities. The energy transition affects different places in different ways, whether it’s Aberdeen, a rural West Coast community, a community in Ghana, South Africa or anywhere in the world. Transition affects places in different ways. When I came here, I had an opportunity to move to Aberdeen eight years ago and join the Geosciences School here. The culture of Aberdeen is very much around and heavily focused on energy in the past, present and in the future. I got more and more involved in questions of energy and I’ve always been really interested in issues around social justice aspects of sustainability and natural resources, including energy. There’s such a huge focus on energy in all aspects of North East life in Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire and the region. One of the big questions around net zero is what does the transition to net zero really mean for a region such as ours? That’s why it’s such a fascinating question because there are a lot of aspects as it makes real material differences to people’s lives here with those changes and how the city, the economy, it’s people and it’s places all change. Those changes are not neutral. They’re not just technological. They actually affect people in really different ways and so the work that we do and the work that we’ve done as well with Alison working on the communities and the localism aspects of this is really, really important because net zero and the transition is not a neutral thing.
Matt: Absolutely not. I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the last few weeks trying to delve into some of the cultural history and some fantastic documentaries around the North East of Scotland and Aberdeen. Obviously, this isn’t the first transition they’re going through. If you look at the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, we saw this boom in the oil and gas industry. In fact, the namesake of this pod, Local Hero (the film) covers that and there are some fantastic documentaries called Black Black Oil and Rigs of Nigg. This is a second transition in just a few decades for Aberdeen and I wanted to get a sense from you both about the extent to which we’re already seeing changes in Aberdeen. Are we still at the talking-shop phase and planning phase or if you were to venture down to Aberdeen Harbour tomorrow, are you already starting to see changes? Is this real yet for the people of Aberdeen or is it something that’s still on the horizon?
Tavis: I can have a stab at that if you like just quickly. I actually think it’s the third transition for Aberdeen because Aberdeen was historically an economy based on fishing and fisheries and there was a huge fleet here. Back in the earlier parts of the 20th century and before that, the entire harbour of Aberdeen (which is one of the longest running harbours in the history of the planet) was full of herring vessels and hundreds and hundreds of boats that fished here. It’s still a very strong maritime culture here in Aberdeen with a working harbour and an active working port and across the economy as well. Oil then came in the ‘60s and ‘70s and in Aberdeen, everybody knows someone who works in the industry. I have many family and friends who work in that industry which has provided a really good income, job security and employment for what was essentially a rural economy before that. That’s a really important aspect. Where are we now? I think it is getting real. It’s contested and this comes back to whose transition is it and who decides about what the shape of the transition is but there are genuine concerns and real opportunities that are happening at all levels, whether you’re working in companies who take a particular view and I would say a view that’s around industry, technology and market-led transitions and other groups that have other views about transitions that are not necessarily connected to technological change but the social and the cultural change, citizen empowerment and the importance of people in that process as well. We have to bring those things together. I don’t think we’ve brought those things together very effectively at all but it is being talked about and there are genuine concerns for the future of both communities and industries in this region and what can be done.
Matt: Alison, do you have a similar view? Obviously, you do a lot more work with communities. Is there something else happening that maybe Tavis hasn’t touched upon?
Alison: I think you can see some difference. You can physically see the difference when you go to the beach in Aberdeen. You can see the wind farms right off the coast. There is that kind of visual difference coming in from a maritime point of view as well. There are changes in communities that they need to support with. They’re trying to take a more holistic approach. F0or instance, in Daviot, the whole of the village is trying to get a complete deep retrofit which is fantastic. There are those kinds of projects. In Banchory, they’re trying to get to net zero with Net Zero Banchory and things like that which are really heartening. A lot of these things are still at a very early stage and I feel that is where Aberdeen is. It’s still in a really stage and far too much of an early stage considering where we’ve got to get to because if we want a just and managed transition, we need other maturing industries to be growing alongside the oil and gas industry as it declines. I’m not seeing enough of that yet. Aberdeen City Council has got its own net zero plan and vision and Tavis and I are helping the council initiative of getting to net zero for the whole city which needs to be widened out a lot more.
Matt: For what year please, Alison? When is their target for?
Alison: It’s 2045. They’re looking to 2045. There are other plans. As Tavis mentioned, there’s quite a lot of the concerns of stakeholders that it’s not cross-region and very much Aberdeen City separate from Aberdeenshire. I know there are some cross-region initiatives. I can’t help but feel we need a regional plan to deal with this that we all link into, so we all work together and pull together on this. That, to me, would be the better way to do things. We need much more action. I think this is the time for action now. Let’s get past the talking stage.
Rebecca: I just want to dig into that a bit more. We’ve talked about the stuff happening in the city and in broader Aberdeenshire. Where are some of the big differences then between what’s happening in the city and the broader areas? Are they facing quite different challenges in your mind in looking at getting to net zero?
Alison: That’s just in relation to the council. Aberdeen City Council is much further ahead in relation to their net-zero plans. Aberdeenshire hasn’t, in my knowledge, got them. I know that shire is looking at their plans but not as a leader within their region which is what you really need the councils to be doing and drawing in other stakeholders along with the communities to really co-create that kind of action plan. What you have is you have a city boundary but for the people that live there, there’s no boundary. The people that are affected by oil and gas are those that live in a much wider area than the city. They obviously live in the shire but then in the shire, you’ve got a lot of people worrying about the transition in relation to farming and agriculture because that’s the other big industry in this area, particularly ruminants such as cows. That’s obviously a worry because we have to have a sustainable transition in relation to agriculture. I think it’s both myself and Tavis’ view that we need a holistic transition which takes in every single aspect of our lives and the worry that I have, and I think is shared by many, is that there is far too much of a concentration on simply an energy transition.
Matt: Alison and Tavis, you said you’ve been involved with Aberdeen’s 2045 net-zero plan. Could you share with us a little bit about what that looks like for Aberdeen and what their priorities are? Obviously, I’m assuming oil and gas is probably front and centre in that but could you share with us a little bit of that vision?
Tavis: It’s still in progress. It’s a draft strategy at the moment that’s being discussed and Alison and I sit on the Net Zero Delivery Unit but it’s very broad-based from what we can see at the moment. I would argue that oil and gas is probably not front and centre in that particular strategy. Actually, it’s more within the remit predominantly of the city council essentially and what it can do but it does reach out to some other areas like communities and civil society. It covers things such as transport, for example, and how we ensure that transport is decarbonised and what sort of infrastructure is across the city for transport. There’s things such as heating which is a major issues, as you can imagine, in the North of Scotland because we have areas of the city that are on the gas grid and areas that are off the gas grid. We have major issues, as everywhere does, around costs and areas of poverty and how we actually ensure sustainable heating. Heating networks is a really big issue up here because we have an emerging heating network in the city. There’s green space and food and the part that Alison and I are working on and co-developing with the council are the citizen empowerment and community empowerment aspects of that plan. So it’s quite a broad-based strategy and it brings a lot of different groups together within an external to council. It also brings in some of that energy expertise as well into that.
Matt: The way that both of you have outlined this is that we’ve almost potentially got a two-tier reality for people living in Aberdeen in the lead-up to 2045 around how they live and how they work. Forgive me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here but for Aberdeen’s net-zero strategy, quite rightly, the council is looking at what it can do and its local stakeholders and offshore is not within that necessarily. They may develop a successful net-zero strategy and execute that and people may be living in a low-carbon way but unless industry, stakeholders other than the council, execute their own net-zero strategy, they could be living in a low-carbon way but working in a high-carbon way. Is this a danger?
Alison: They call it a route map. The route map that we’ve been working on is supposed to be for Aberdeen City, so not just the council but for everyone to tie into and we’re looking to get pledges from people to bring into that. That’s businesses as well. There’s a lot that goes on that you never know an awful lot about. The whole Energy Transition Zone, for instance, is very secretive. There is not much known about it [laughter]. Their business plan isn’t available and so it’s very difficult to know what that really entails and it’s really important that we know what that entails because there is a potential unjust transition aspect of that because we have a local development plan going through at the moment which highlights green land of communities, like St Fitticks Park and also the beloved rare breeds Doonies Farm and other green land across our coast just by the new harbour for development for the Energy Transition Zone. That went in really quite last minute without any or very much ability for local people to comment on it. We have this kind of local development plan going through which can potentially mean that an awful lot of wetlands (not even just our parks) which are very biodiverse and important to the city might actually then be paved over for the Energy Transition Zone. You have a real potential for a clash between two competing aspects of a transition and that’s when the real crux comes in about how you make it a fair and just one.
Tavis: Yeah, they’re really good points from Alison there and I agree with them. It’s a part of the juxtaposition of living in a place like Aberdeen where you’ve got the local government with really progressive developing climate and just transition strategies and you’ve got global supply chains and global companies working in oil, gas and energy. I guess part of the excitement for me, as a researcher but also as someone working in the community sense as well, is that with all these different views and interpretations, there’s a lot of power here. As a social scientist, I’m really interested in power, who frames the debate, who steers the debate and who has the resources, for example. We see huge amounts of money coming into the North East of Scotland all being promised to the Just Transition Fund, or the North East Just Transition Strategy, or the Oil and Gas Strategy. There are questions there about how that’s going to be spent and where that money goes. Who decides about the transition that’s going to be funded and resourced? We certainly feel that there has been an imbalance in the debate. I certainly feel there’s been an imbalance in the debate about that and because you’ve got different transitions for different parts of society, often the just transition is framed around workers and that’s critically important. It’s one of the key aspects of the transition. That’s workers in a more general sense, whether you’re in oil and gas, fishing, farming, tourism or you’re a car mechanic but in this place in particular, there are 100,000 employees approximately in the oil and gas industry in Scotland and a very large proportion of 30,000 plus are in the North East of Scotland. That’s a really important question for them but then also you have just transitions for communities and the people who don’t work in the oil and gas industry of which there are many in the North East of Scotland. How do you deal with communities or areas that may not have benefited from the last three or four decades of oil and gas development? There are many places in the North East that have not benefited from oil and gas development, so how are those concerns taken into account? How do we make this fair and how do we make this work for everybody in the region? The transition has to be really democratic, broad, open and transparent not just for the energy elites.
Rebecca: I’m going to put that back on you. You framed that as a question. How do we make sure that this a just transition and a fair transition for everybody? You explicitly talked about the workers who also may not get a say in the future of work and also about communities. I know that you mentioned that you’re both involved in working with the council and particularly on engagement and participation elements. Is that something that we need to see more broadly? If that was happening across the board, would that solve this issue or are there other things that really need to be incorporated quite proactively, whether it’s by industry, government or local government, to ensure that this is a fair transition? What do we really need to see happening?
Tavis: What makes it fair? That’s a really difficult question but participation and transparency are key parts of that but they’re not the only part of it. I think even with participation and transparency, we’ve got a long way to go. I think the work that Alison, Tara and colleagues at NESCAN and the work we’ve been doing in our Scottish universities with the Insight Institute project on Just Transitions in the North East – that’s a bit of a tongue-twister, I’m sorry – is about increasing people’s capacity to act, to pull together in communities and to empower them. It’s also that we need resources and infrastructure to make this change and to make those behavioural aspects stick. For example, how do we ensure that there are genuine opportunities for sustainable travel around the region? These are questions that every city faces around cost, access and generation of energy in the home but the thing we have here in Aberdeen is how can we draw upon the expertise and the knowledge of those in the energy industry to help us along that path but also to ensure that everyone has a voice, everyone has a role and everyone has a say in that.
Alison: Yeah, I agree. It needs to be a process. You have to have this kind of co-creation aspect but also the money [laughter]... where does the money go? That has to be decided in a democratic way. At the moment, it feels like the funds are just going to go into big business and go into the pockets of shareholders. To my mind, we’ve really got to separate what is best for the region and we need to have a diversified economy and not the bust and boom that we have had up until now with the oil and gas industry. We need several different industries. I don’t want it just purely to go to energy. It can’t just go to energy. There are not enough jobs purely in the energy streams that we’re talking about to take account of all the people that are going to need to transition across from oil and gas. That’s not just to transition across from oil and gas but all those industries that are dependent on oil and gas as well like all the hotels in Aberdeen. You used to not be able to get a B&B room or a hotel room in the city during the week for love nor money and now, of course you can. Okay, it’s Covid as well but there’s a huge amount of people dependent on that industry. You really do need to be thinking about it in a much wider sense. I think the money has to go into the region to regenerate the region and not afterwards but now. Obviously, we can help and we should help businesses to transition but not just give them – particularly the big oil and gas companies – money to put in their already humongous pockets to then give out to shareholders. I don’t think that’s right.
Rebecca: Do you think a lot of this comes down to things that need to happen at a policy level? Just picking up on three of the things that you both mentioned like participation. How can we increase those democratic and participatory processes? There are things like citizens’ assemblies, for examples, and community engagement. There’s the transparency and I’m thinking particularly around the Energy Transition Zone example you gave. How do we make sure that those processes are more transparent? Of course, there’s the finance. Is this something that government has to set out? Do we need new regulation or do you think it’s down to other actors to make sure all of this actually happens? Whose does this lie with, basically?
Alison: Everybody. It’s all of us really, isn’t it?
Tavis: It lies with everyone at all levels. Aberdeen is a global city and it’s a city that has very strong links to London. It has strong links to Edinburgh and it has strong regional and local links. In some ways, there needs to be levers pulled at all levels. For example, Aberdeen has received, as many cities have, sizeable sums around the regional city deals over the years. How is that money going to be spent and who receives the benefits of those funds in and around making transition happen? I think there needs to be much more transparency and democracy but that can only happen if citizens and communities are empowered to ask those questions, that they have the capability to act and are able to mobilise, for example. One thing I’ve done in our work at the university is trying to ensure that a lot of the research that we do has both industry and community representation on it. It’s only a small aspect but it’s about ensuring that there are diverse voices at the table. It’s a key first step that hasn’t been considered. When you’re looking at a major initiative or working with different groups, we should have citizen and community groups at the decision-making table. Often, they’re not in the decisions that are made around energy transition in the city. I think we’re progressing along that. I think we’re moving in a good direction but there’s a huge way to go and ultimately, probably policy and regulatory reform about how we actually make decisions in the local environment. Some of my research has pointed to the need of things using the ETZ as a case study. In St Fitticks Park, we need much more active roles for communities that actually have a regulatory role in planning. Citizens’ assemblies are great but their decisions tend to influence the process and influence the outcome. They can’t just be run and then they say, ‘That’s nice. Let’s go this way.’ They actually have to be responded to formally as a part of the planning process and things like that.
Matt: So it’s about that governance architecture and the process by which you’re starting to platform people’s voices but also give them power with regards to decision-making so that, as you say, they are at the table.
Alison: I completely agree with all that Tavis has said but what I would like to say is that we do need direction from the top. When we’re talking about making sure there is a real transition, not just diversification, in the industry that is keeping us afloat in the North East right now, then government needs to say, ‘Okay, this is when we’re phasing out oil and gas. These gateways are X, Y and Z. This is the percentage that we need to do this.’ They need to be very clear on the fact as to whether they’re going to allow new oil and gas production or just wind down existing fields. They have to give that kind of level of structure to this transition. They have to give incentives and they have to give regulations that force it and put monetary values on this. If oil and gas companies still want to continue to pump out and oil and gas knowing that our planet is dying because of it and that we, as a species, are going to die out, then you need to make it so that they have to pay huge amounts to make sure that carbon doesn’t go into our atmosphere. We need to have direction from government, regulation from government, incentives from government and we need to have these obligations cascaded down to local authorities too. At the moment, we’ve got no obligations on local authorities to get to net zero by 2045 as a minimum and that is ridiculous.
Matt: You may have pre-empted my next question, Alison...
Alison: Oh really?
Matt: ...but in a good way. What we try and do at the end of every episode, at least for now, is to pause and ask the question what does this mean next? Our listeners ordinarily are interested in local climate action. What can they, their families, their communities and their councils do next? I’d like us to just pause and think about the case of Aberdeen. Obviously, Aberdeen is quite unique in the sense of the UK but it’s not the only oil and gas city on planet Earth by any stretch of the imagination. I just would like to get a sense of some reflections from both of you and some pointers to our listeners about what they can do going forward. You may be framing this as residents of Aberdeen but it could be any oil and gas town or city. What lessons can we learn so far from what’s happened in Aberdeen and to take the next steps forward as citizens of these towns and cities to accelerate that net-zero just transition? A big question but a soap box moment none the less. Who would like to tackle that gorilla first?
Tavis: Just something really important but basic based on my experience is that you should talk to your friends, your family, your neighbours and your street about the changes that you want. I come from a coal-mining community in Australia and my dad and my grandfather both either worked in power stations or the mines for coal. Those cultures are still really strong. You have to have those dinner table conversations and say, ‘We need to move away from these resources into a renewable and a just future across the board.’ Sometimes, that’s awkward and they put you in a difficult space. Have those conversations more broadly and get involved in your local groups or if you haven’t got one, start a local community climate action group because really magic things happen when communities and people come together as we’ve done in our own little community in Newburgh and working our way through it. Start actions, empower yourselves and have the conversations.
Matt: I really like that, Tavis. Yeah, I think that’s really valuable. Alison, your moment really to offer our listeners some steps forward.
Alison: There’s normal stuff that all of us can do like how we live our lives. Reduce what you consume. Actively walk and cycle rather than take your car. All that kind of stuff is really good. If you’re talking about what’s specific in relation to being in a transition zone, as it were, then I would say what you have to do is demand a seat at the table and go knocking on the doors. I wouldn’t have had a seat on the Just Transition Delivery Unit if I hadn’t gone and put a letter in saying, ‘Where is the community in this discussion?’ I think it’s really important that you speak to your neighbours and speak to people. Go and group together and make a start but also it’s about getting a seat on that decision-making table. I think that’s really crucial and speaking to your MPs and MSPs to make sure that they realise that it’s more than just simply an energy transition. It’s not just speaking to big people but speaking to everybody.
Matt: Fantastic. Well said.
Tavis: Political change is important. Political change is a massive part of this. Political engagement is a massive part of this.
Rebecca: Yeah, I find it’s very easy to sometimes reflect back on or fall back on those kinds of things that we can do as consumers and so frequently, we’re thought of, particularly by the big energy industries, as fairly passive consumers where all we can do is change what we buy. You’re right that there are so many other actions that we can have like getting that seat at the table and voting and engaging in the political space is absolutely something that sounds like it’s going to have a massive impact or has the potential to have a massive impact, particularly, Tavis, if you can get all of your neighbours, friends and communities on board as well and then it’s not just you knocking at that door. It’s a whole load of you. Some really, really solid ideas and definitely something, Matt, for us to take back into our communities and to work with a little bit more.
Matt: Absolutely.
Rebecca: So I guess all that’s left to do is to say thank you so much for joining us. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and it’s been fascinating to learn a little bit more about what’s happening in Aberdeen and also to think about some of the things that we can all be doing at home and in our communities. You’ve been listening to Local Zero. If you haven’t already, please do go and find and follow us @LocalZeroPod on Twitter and get involved in the discussions there. If, like me, you’re either useless at social media or can’t constrain your thoughts to 140 characters, please email us at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com. For now, thanks and bye.
Matt: See you soon.
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