It is now 50 years since the SNP famously used the phrase “Its Scotland’s Oil” in its successful 1974 General Election strategy.

The actual “Its Scotland’s Oil” campaign had been launched three years earlier in 1971 and, to quote Professor Sir Tom Devine: “… brilliantly exported the stark contrast between the fabulous wealth off Scottish coasts and the fact that the nation was then suffering the worst rate of unemployment in Europe and remained yoked to a British state stumbling from one economic crisis to another.”

Scotland’s oil has continued to have a fundamental impact on our politics. The creation of the Barnett Formula can largely be attributed to the perceived financial imbalance thrown up by oil revenues.  Scotland’s wholesale rejection of Thatcher and all Tories thereafter is in no small part due to the squandering of oil wealth. The failure unlike our near sea neighbours Norway to create a sovereign wealth fund is a real time scar on Scottish and UK industrial policy to this day. 

Of course, 50 years on, it is far better understood that as well as being a now declining resource, oil and gas use is a major contributor to climate change. A crisis becoming increasingly visible in our lives, from the floods in Valencia to the price of food in your shopping basket. 

A sovereign wealth fund, if one existed, would have been long dedicated to both smoothing the impact on workers of fluctuation in production and to investing in transition technologies and infrastructure. 

Our failing on the latter is so manifest that it is wearying to repeat. We never realised the 1970s promise to be the Kuwait of oil production nor the Saudi Arabia of renewables as Alex Salmond proclaimed 40 years later.

Decline in oil production is assured. Peak production of it was some quarter of a century ago, though the pace of that decline and how it fits into broader industrial and climate policy remains a highly contested area of debate.

New licensing and the balance between domestic production and consumption were a major election issue and the debate isn’t going anywhere soon. Unite the Union's campaign 'No Ban Without a Plan' speaks directly to this. For some environmentalists, a ban must be pursued at any cost.

Yet there also exists a growing consensus that without an effective investment and industrial plan, decarbonisation costs will fall unfairly on the workers and become less achievable politically to boot. 

This summer, sixty leading climate organisations including Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Oxfam GB and Extinction Rebellion joined leading trade unions including Unite the Union Scotland, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and Unison Scotland in calling for a “clear and funded” transition plan for workers and communities reliant on the oil and gas industry.

This is why the fate of Grangemouth has become such an iconic issue.  It's why I'll be addressing the ‘Save Grangemouth’ rally at the Scottish Parliament organised by Unite this Thursday. It's as simple as this: will concerted action from two governments, who claim to be committed to the Just Transition, make this a moment that we turn the tide on our monumental failures of the past half a century? Or will it be the next nail in the coffin of any idea that things can change? And further evidence that energy is something politicians want to talk about but not actually manage?

Last week, Unite wrote to Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. They have a plan. The plan lays out how part of a facility which has been central to the processing of oil and gas and thus to climate change, can now play a reverse role in processing organic waste products into sustainable fuel, initially for aviation. 

This product, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is in demand. Big demand. Governments across the world, including our own, are placing expectations on airlines to meet targets for the use of SAF in their energy mix.  Year on year, those targets are increasing. Year on year, therefore, demand will grow.   With all our major competitors gearing up to massively expand production, the only question that faces decision makers is whether we are going to be producers or just consumers.

These transitions across a number of industries are entirely viable. They’ve been done in other places. It’s estimated to be 30% cheaper than building new facilities and it’s going to be more immediate in terms of supporting jobs and delivering commercial output than other planned transition projects which are part of ‘Project Willow’. ‘Project Willow’ is packed with interesting ideas for future developments in the Grangemouth site, all practical and supportable in the longer term but, frankly, that’s ‘Jam Tomorrow’, to quote Unite.

What do we need to put the plan into action? Let’s start with an investigation into both the financial statements of PetroIneos regarding the profitability of Grangemouth and a full and open assessment of the plant’s potential to be transitioned. 

There are several reasons to require more information from the company, particularly if, as has been suggested in some quarters, it might not welcome competition in SAF production because of commercial interests it has elsewhere.

Central to Unite’s plan is that our governments should become investors of first resort. This is key.  Too often government investments such as at the former BiFab and Fergusons Shipyards have been portrayed as last resort actions. Our new industrial strategy should see governments moving first, investing in innovations which carry massive potential benefits but also risk. 

First resort investment recognises the whole economy and whole society benefits from maintaining and transitioning processes and jobs. First resort investment should also come with ownership, equity stakes and other means by which the medium-term profits accrued through public investment are returned to the people.

If it’s to be truly Scotland’s oil, wouldn’t it be something if ‘our oil’ could be used to retain skills, save thousands of jobs and reduce carbon emissions at the same time? The workers at the site have the skills and enthusiasm to do it, they’ve prepared their plan. Rising to the challenge now requires the political will from the UK and Scottish Government.

Roz Foyer is the general secretary of the STUC