A Platform and Friends of the Earth briefing for MSPs ahead of a debate in the Scottish Parliament on the need for an Offshore Training Passport. Friends of the Earth Scotland and Platform believe an Offshore Training Passport is essential to ensure a Just Transition for workers in the energy sector. The lack of cross-sector…
Polluted Pensions? Clearing the air around UK pensions and fossil fuels
Hot on the heels of the Petrol Panic comes the Gas Price Panic and the Electricity Price Panic – my head spins as I try to take in each of these fossil fuel driven convulsions. It is worth the effort to unpick this ball of yarn and lay out the tale it reveals. It is…
Week two of the Petrol Panic – Monday 4th October. It looks like the pumps are working as normal in the BP petrol station at 232 Priory Road in Anfield, Liverpool, fed by road tankers filled at the gantries of Stanlow Refinery, 12 miles to south on the banks of the Mersey. But the Petrol…
Petrol Panic grips the nation. A second week of fuel shortages on the forecourts threatens to hobble the economy, or at least erode support for the Tories in their heartlands and overshadow the Conservative Party Conference. Will queues at the petrol pumps in Manchester crowd the prime minister’s show? The Shell stations in Bolton were…
Another consultation document to go through. Another online form. Another swamp of documents. They are drowning us in data. This is the Community Impacts Consultation for the Lower Thames Crossing issued by the UK government agency, National Highways (formerly Highways England). Again and again we go over the same ground. (We have blogged on these…
Oxford, UK: A year after Oxford University decided to divest from fossil fuels, the Oxfordshire local government pension fund has begun excluding fossil fuel investments from their own fund. On 10th September, the administering committee for the scheme, worth approximately £3 billion and with around 65,000 members, voted to move the full value of the…
In September 2020, Platform released a report, OFFSHORE: Oil and gas workers’ views on industry conditions and the energy transition, in collaboration with Friends of the Earth Scotland and Greenpeace UK. The report was the culmination of the first large-scale survey of offshore oil and gas workers in the UK, surveying 1,383 workers (approximately 5%…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TRAINING COSTS CHAOS BLOCKS OIL WORKERS MOVING TO RENEWABLES: GOVERNMENT MUST MEET WORKERS’ DEMANDS TO REMOVE HURDLES Survey of offshore workers reveals training costs averaging over £1,800 per year. Success of the UK’s transition to renewables currently depends on workers’ ability to pay to duplicate existing training certificates. The UK…
Platform is a research and advocacy organisation with a focus on energy system change. Our current campaigns focus on the social, economic and environmental impacts of the global oil industry. The organisation is led by the staff in a distributed leadership model where the direction and strategy are decided collectively. We self-manage issues through a…