Greens demand an independent inquiry into Mossmorran in Fife (petition) : Scotland – Auto Republish

Terms of reference would really matter for this. If the objective is to get the plant closed, versus just making sure the current owners stick to regulations, I can’t see that gaining political support. I live locally, and the flaring is a nuisance, but there’s lots of skilled and well paid jobs there – some families have a couple of generations of workers there.

The plant produces precursors for plastics. Unless plastic consumption falls by enough to offset recycling increases, the plastics are going to come from somewhere and producing from ethane is cleaner than cracking naphtha to get to the same ethylene molecule. Closing mossmorran wouldn’t necessarily help reduce climate altering emissions if its product just replaced in the global supply chain with ethylene produced elsewhere so we need to be careful about unintended consequences too.