Obviously regulation is the backstop for changing behaviour, but we must also look at how we can facilitate people’s undertaking energy efficiency measures. It is a challenge for a person or indeed a business to get such work done, and the question is how that can be made easy for them.
People want to be able to use trusted traders, and often they want to be able to call on quality assurance to assure the work that is done. One major issue is that under some of the previous schemes, particularly those that were funded under the energy company obligations, the level of quality has varied. In one local authority, for example, 50 per cent of the cavities that had to be filled were either not filled—holes were just drilled—or only partly filled, all because tradesmen were unskilled. We therefore have to skill up our workforce, because Scotland does not have a sufficient number of people trained to do that. A lot of traditional workpeople could adapt their skills, but there are just not enough joiners, plasterers and the like to undertake the tasks.
We also need community engagement and involvement. We need only look at the regeneration that has taken place through some of the area-based schemes that have been constituted; we can see the external cladding on people’s properties and the pride that people take in them. External wall insulation is not appropriate for an awful lot of stock, but it is appropriate for certain sectors. However, in order to make it happen, it has to be organised; as with any medium-sized building project, it has to be managed well and the quality assurance has to be in place to ensure that the standards are met.
On switching, an interesting fact is that although a one-off charge might be involved, it costs only a relatively small amount of money to keep switching each year. On the whole, however, switching does not make people use less energy; in fact, most people do not know how much energy they actually use. They know if they find their fuel bill difficult to pay, but they are not aware whether their bills are high or low compared with those of their neighbours or people in other localities. What support mechanisms or behaviour change programmes need to be put in place so that people start paying attention to that issue? After all, we need to get people involved in reducing our carbon emissions, and the challenge is how we get them interested in doing that.
Full area-based schemes could have a role to play in that respect, but the excellent programmes that we already have, such as the warmer homes Scotland scheme, have not had huge amounts of promotion. Because demand is so high, we are not promoting those programmes to the extent that we should be promoting them; if we did so and people knew that they were there, we would not be able to meet demand with the current budget. There could be interest if you promoted the programmes, but you would have to think about how they would be funded.
Grants are applicable to those who need them, but we need to make things easier through loan finance and other such facilities, and we need to think about how we can get the mortgage industry and the very well-established lending market involved. Finally, businesses also present a big challenge, because they often make much shorter-term decisions and are not prepared to invest in anything that does not give them a six-month return. As a result, you will need a regulation to make businesses consider such issues.