Research commissioned by the Green Party in Scotland is claimed to show that a transition from fossil fuels to green energy could create 200,000 jobs across the UK’s northernmost and economically challenged region by 2035.

At the same time, Kirsten Robb, the party’s candidate for Central Scotland in next year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament, said a nationalization of the petrochemical complex at Grangemouth, majority owned by Ineos, would guarantee security for the jobs of workers there.

Under public ownership, the site where a bitter industrial dispute was fought out – and won by Ineos – in 2013 could become a center for sustainable biofuels and plastics manufacturing, without any need for fracking, as currently propagated by the Swiss-based multinational chemical producer, Robb said.

“Retooling Grangemouth to manufacture the fuels and plastics of the future will put Central Scotland at the cutting edge of the new materials industry,” the candidate asserted, adding: “We should not tolerate livelihoods being held to ransom, especially when that workforce has the skills not just to survive without corporate firms’ generosity, but to carve out a position as world leaders in their field.”

Other Green proposals include creating a publicly-owned renewables company to encourage offshore wind, tidal and wave developments; converting Grangemouth to make and use synthetic gas; launching a national insulation retrofit program and a large-scale reforesting scheme; as well as providing support packages for fossil fuel workers to aid their transition to new sectors.