Annabelle Ewing's just transition plan for North Sea workers

Annabelle Ewing is best known in her Ochil and South Perthshire constituency as a determined voice for working families who built their lives around the North Sea oil and gas industry. Standing again for the Scottish National Party at Westminster, she has spent her campaign listening to engineers, rig workers, supply chain staff and port operators who fear that the move to cleaner energy will leave them behind. Her pitch is straightforward: the energy shift is inevitable, but the human cost should never be passed on to those who powered the country for decades.

Her message lands at a moment when policy in Scotland and well beyond is being reshaped by the climate emergency. Ewing argues that a genuine just transition must protect wages, fund retraining, anchor new green industries in coastal and former industrial towns, and give unions a seat at every decision table. As she tours community halls and local clubs across the constituency, she keeps returning to the same theme: the people who kept the lights on deserve a plan that keeps them in work.

The stakes for thousands of skilled workers

The North Sea remains one of the most technically demanding industrial environments on earth. Decommissioning, platform reuse, hydrogen production, offshore wind and carbon storage are all expected to grow, but each requires a workforce with very specific capabilities. Ewing regularly points out that rig technicians, pipeline welders, marine crew and project engineers cannot simply be redeployed overnight, and that pretending otherwise has already cost earlier generations of coal and steel communities dearly.

She is equally frank about the demographic challenge. Many energy workers in Fife, Aberdeen and across the central belt are now in their late forties and fifties, with mortgages, school-age children and limited appetite for relocating to unfamiliar regions. A credible plan must, in her words, "come to them" with skills hubs close enough to honour existing family ties and community roots.

Why Ochil and South Perthshire sits at the centre

Although the constituency is landlocked, it shares a single labour market with coastal supply chain clusters. Specialist engineering firms, fabrication subcontractors and rail freight hubs across Clackmannanshire and Perthshire feed directly into North Sea contracts. Ewing's team has mapped these connections in detail, identifying several thousand local jobs whose futures hinge on the speed and fairness of the transition.

These are the kinds of places Australian readers will recognise from places like the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, where coal communities have fought for decades to keep schools, hospitals and sporting clubs alive as their old industries wound down. The political instinct is the same on both sides of the world: when a town loses its reason for being, no central government slogan can fill the gap.

A lawyer's instinct for fairness

Ewing's training as a solicitor shapes everything she proposes. She speaks fluently about employment law, redundancy protections and the legal scaffolding needed to give workers real, enforceable rights during the transition. Her background has also made her impatient with vague ministerial promises, and her leaflets set out firm commitments on consultation, collective bargaining and ring-fenced funding.

For those interested in the wider conversation around institutional responsibility, recent reports such as a civil society legal review show how seriously other societies take the question of who owes what to whom. Ewing applies that same seriousness to the rig crews, welders and port workers of her constituency.

Retraining, renewables and the new pipeline

The campaign's jobs plan rests on three pillars. First, a guaranteed retraining allowance for any North Sea worker whose contract ends, covering tuition, living costs and travel. Second, a programme to convert existing fabrication yards into facilities for offshore wind towers, floating platforms and tidal components. Third, a binding "local first" rule for publicly funded renewable projects, requiring developers to show how they will tap into the regional skills base.

Internationally, this mirrors the approach being trialled in places such as Newcastle and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, where the long, slow managed retreat from coal mining is being paired with Renewable Energy Zones and union-backed apprenticeship schemes. Ewing has said she wants Scotland to learn directly from that Australian experience rather than repeat its mistakes.

Comparing the Scottish and Australian pathways

The table below sketches how a Scottish plan led from Ochil compares with one of Australia's better-known regional transition efforts. Both regions face similar structural choices about funding, skills and political voice.

Element	Ochil and the North Sea (Scotland)	Latrobe Valley (Victoria, Australia)
Legacy industry	Offshore oil, gas and fabrication	Brown coal fired power generation
Workforce scale	Tens of thousands across the supply chain	Around 4,500 direct coal jobs at peak
Main retraining offer	Guaranteed allowance and paid tuition	Skills and Job Support packages
Lead new sector	Offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon storage	Renewable Energy Zones, transmission build
Worker voice in policy	Proposed statutory advisory group	Regional Transition Committee with union chairs

Both regions share a stubborn truth: without durable political commitment, retraining money evaporates and promises are quietly forgotten at the next budget cycle.

Local campaigning and voter engagement

Across Alloa, Tillicoultry, Dunblane, Crieff and Perth, Ewing and her activists have been knocking on doors long before the campaign officially began. Voters tell her, as they tell candidates everywhere, that they want shorter hospital waiting times, lower bills and decent local schools. They also tell her, with a frankness familiar to anyone who has sat at a kitchen table in suburban Geelong or Launceston, that they do not trust politicians to deliver for working people.

Her team responds with a doorstep flyer listing specific commitments: a worker protection guarantee, dedicated transition funding, and full transparency over any deal struck between Holyrood, Westminster and major energy firms. They describe the campaign as the most detailed local jobs offer the constituency has ever received.

A roadmap built around people, not slogans

Ewing's central argument is that a just transition cannot be a slogan printed on the side of a campaign van. It must be a written contract with workers and their unions, with money, timelines and enforcement built in. She wants decommissioning contracts to include local employment clauses, public pension funds to back Scottish renewable projects, and hydrogen export deals that prioritise domestic supply chains first.

International experience suggests she is right to push hard now. Regions that began planning early, with workers at the table, consistently outperform those that waited until the closures were already announced. The promise her team keeps repeating on the doorstep is simple: the people who built Scotland's energy past should be paid to build its energy future.

If you want to back this plan, host a doorstep event, or simply read the full policy text, head over to Annabelle's official campaign website and sign up to help. With enough volunteers and enough pressure, Ochil and South Perthshire can show the rest of these islands what a worker-led energy shift really looks like.