This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

“Our plans will help create an economy in which there is no need to leave your hometown just to find a decent job, ” said UK Energy Security and Net Zero secretary, Ed Miliband, as he launched the UK Government’s clean energy jobs plan last week.

“Thanks to this government’s commitment to clean energy," he said, "a generation of young people in Scotland can have well-paid secure jobs, from plumbers to electricians and welders.”

Fine words, but can we believe this is a plan that will deliver? Will the “over 40,000 extra clean energy jobs in Scotland alone by 2030” the document promises come through? And is that figure enough to constitute what might be called a just transition?

Miliband described the clean energy transition as the “defining economic opportunity of the twenty-first century”. The question is for whom. Who benefits? And who will get to be part of this opportunity?

These past couple of weeks I’ve been working on a mini-series for the Herald on the just transition, ahead of a summit to be held by the Just Transition Commission next week, so I was interested to see, in the run up to this piece of work, the publication of this landmark plan.

When we talk about just transition, often we talk about jobs, though that’s not everything a just transition is about. Job numbers nevertheless do give us a sense of whether people and communities are being left behind in the transition away from the fossil fuels that are driving climate change to clean energy.

According to this new plan, Scotland will “benefit from up to 60,000 clean energy jobs by 2030, a 40,000 increase from 2023”. Some of these will be taken up by existing workers, and the plan says that, oil and gas workers, "will benefit from up to £20 million in total from the UK and Scottish Governments to provide bespoke careers training for thousands of new roles in clean energy”.

“This follows high demand," it notes, "for the Aberdeen skills pilot, which is already supporting workers into new careers.”

The ‘energy skills passport’, which identifies routes for oil and gas workers to easily transition into roles in offshore wind, to new sectors including nuclear and the electricity grid, is also set to be extended.

It has mostly been greeted with........

© Herald Scotland