Official Report 530KB pdf
Good morning and welcome to the 14th meeting of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee in session 4. I remind everyone present to ensure that all mobile phones and electronic devices are switched off. We have received apologies from Rhoda Grant, Patrick Harvie and Anne McTaggart.
I am the head of the Energy Saving Trust team in Scotland. We deliver energy efficiency programmes to the domestic sector on behalf of the Scottish Government. I imagine that one of the reasons for your inviting me here is the fact that we manage the energy assistance package customer journey on behalf of the Scottish Government.
Good morning. I am from Money Advice Scotland. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the committee this morning. Our organisation promotes the development of free, independent, confidential money advice. Our members give debt advice to members of the public who seek help. We are increasingly finding that fuel poverty is inextricably linked to other debt problems. Last week, we had a conference at which it became clear that debt is inextricably linked to mental health issues, which puts a burden on the health service. There are real issues for everyone here to try to address.
I am from Age Scotland, Scotland’s largest charity representing the needs and views of older people. Fuel poverty affects every demographic group in Scotland, but older people are continually the group that is most affected. Even the statistics that were published last week, which showed a drop in the level of fuel poverty across Scotland, recognised that more than 50 per cent of single pensioners are still in fuel poverty. My comments today will reflect that.
I am director of the fuel poverty charity Energy Action Scotland, which has campaigned on fuel poverty since 1983. We are a membership organisation and our members range from other voluntary sector and charitable bodies through local authorities and housing associations to installation contractors that deliver energy efficiency measures in people’s homes. Our membership stretches from Orkney and Shetland down to Dumfries and Galloway, and the Borders. We cover all of Scotland, advising on policy and campaigning to ensure that people remain interested in fuel poverty and continue to wish to address it.
What is your impression of the level of public awareness and take-up of the various Government-backed programmes to help people to insulate their homes and replace central heating, for example? We have all been approached by constituents who have concerns about those different programmes and initiatives. Is there enough information about what is available? Is the level of take-up as it should be? What more should be done to promote take-up?
Around 600,000 homes in Scotland are in fuel poverty, so I guess that the question is how the take-up through the energy saving Scotland advice network, which delivers the customer journey for the energy assistance package, compares with that figure. In 2010-11, we offered about 132,000 people the first and subsequent stages of the package, so we are in the right order of magnitude.
I think that you said that there were 600,000 homes in fuel poverty in Scotland.
Yes.
How many of those would be eligible for assistance?
As you will be aware, there are four stages in the energy assistance package. The first stage—the most basic one—is energy advice, and everyone is eligible for that. Then there are income maximisation measures, benefit referrals and referrals for the enhanced or social tariffs—now the warm homes discount—from the fuel suppliers. Everybody is potentially eligible for those.
I will let the other witnesses speak before I bring Chic Brodie in.
On whether public awareness is as good as it should be, as Mike Thornton said, a lot of work has been done through training that was supported by Consumer Focus Scotland and Energy Action Scotland. We have been involved in that work.
There is a perception that a lot of work and hassle are involved even in thinking about applying for any stage of the energy assistance package for older people. I know lots of older people who should be eligible because they do not have central heating in their flats or houses, but who do not want to take the step of applying for assistance because there is a psychological barrier. That is the first thing that we must tackle.
Energy Action Scotland projects—and the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment, Mr Neil’s figures show—that it is likely that 900,000 households in Scotland will be living in fuel poverty by the end of the year, not 600,000 households. The majority of the rise is caused by the increases in fuel prices, which are biting.
I will make an observation on what Mr Kerr just said. My sense is that there is a lot of public confusion about what is available. The impression is that many different programmes have offered different interventions, such as new central heating systems and insulation. A lot of people are not aware of exactly what is on offer. If people ask, they will be told, but it is not immediately obvious whether people are eligible for assistance and what might be available to eligible people.
I agree with everything that the other witnesses have said. I will wrap a bit of context around that. When someone calls the advice network, we use exactly the phrase that Norrie Kerr mentioned—that is not surprising, as he worked on introducing the energy assistance package. We do not say, “Do you fancy free insulation?” We ask questions such as, “Are you having difficulty in paying your fuel bills?” or “Do you worry about whether you can heat your home?” If they answer yes, we assume that they are at risk of fuel poverty and we take them down a path that could lead to the rest of the package.
For the benefit of the clerks, I declare an interest in that my partner worked for a commercial office space management company that has contingencies in the energy field. That will be relevant when we talk to the architects later on.
I think that it is real. The energy companies are quite strongly motivated, particularly because the current CERT scheme will be coming to an end fairly soon and they have to achieve their targets. There is a lot of activity to find the right people to give the measures to.
As Mike Thornton said, the CERT programme and the programme prior to it—the standards of performance programme—have been running for more than 12 years, so we have dealt with a lot of what we might call the low-hanging fruit such as inner-city areas and other areas with a dense population. We are left with many rural areas. One element to consider is the cost to companies of finding jobs. The tonne of carbon saved has a monetary value for the companies, but finding the more expensive jobs costs the companies more money.
The conversation that I had with an energy company did not suggest that that is a difficulty. I was going to ask about local authority engagement, but you have pre-empted that. The suggestion from the particular power company that I spoke to was that it could not get the data. I suggested working with local authorities, but the company did not feel that that engagement was there. However, what you say is encouraging.
Every organisation, every local authority and every commercial operator can always improve the way in which it identifies and targets people. I have spoken about the referral rates at different stages of the energy assistance package. A lot of work is going into that, and a lot of people are coming in. However, we may not be seeing as many positive referrals as we would like for income maximisation, for loft insulation and for boiler replacements, for example. All across the country, we can definitely do more to identify fuel-poor consumers—by which I do not mean just older people. Local authorities will clearly be a big partner in that.
At the moment, 900,000 people are staring down the barrel of a gun. We cannot wait for a few years.
The challenge to abolish fuel poverty by 2016 has faced the Scottish Government and the previous Scottish Executive. The report of the Scottish fuel poverty forum in 2008 called for a step change in the funding to tackle fuel poverty, but we have not seen that from any Government or Executive. The budget for fuel poverty measures this year is around £49 million. Next year the figure will increase but, even by 2014, less money will be spent than was spent in 2010-11. At neither Scottish nor UK level are we seeing the necessary funding to tackle the 600,000 to 900,000 homes in fuel poverty.
May I ask one last question, convener?
I will bring in Yvonne MacDermid first, on this particular issue.
Local authorities provide both funding and money advice, and they are the trusted intermediaries. The 32 local authorities should have that built into all their strategies for financial inclusion. Co-ordination and linking up is required. At the minute, we have a postcode lottery for advice and access to schemes. Overcoming that will be a challenge, but it is doable.
Thank you for that. That is probably the most succinct response that I have heard on how we can tackle the problem.
You might think that I would say this, but there is a single channel. The key point is that, through the universal home insulation scheme and other initiatives, there are a lot of local authority schemes. Those schemes are determined by individual local authorities, so there is variation in provision. Also, as Yvonne MacDermid said, local authorities’ provision of money advice, debt advice and fuel advice varies, and in straitened times it is likely that those services may be vulnerable in some areas. However, the current strategy is to have a national framework, the energy assistance package, and I emphasise the fact that that can refer to local schemes. If people are not aware of their local authority scheme but ring the national number, they will be referred to the local scheme if the offer is there. There are frequent referrals through the network to individual UHIS schemes and, as you would expect, we work closely with those.
What we do not have just now is a national framework. Each local authority has its own local housing strategy. Indeed, we have been working with Scottish Government officials to influence those local housing strategies so that they will build in fuel poverty and energy efficiency measures. They are all set at different levels, depending on the authorities’ other priorities. It is entirely right for local authorities to do that. However, Yvonne MacDermid made a very good point about it being a postcode lottery, as some strategies are significantly more advanced than others. If we do not have a national framework for them to work to, that will continue.
Norman Kerr will remember that he and I were at a meeting on fuel poverty a few weeks ago. A lady attending the meeting asked for advice. She described that she lived on the island of Arran, in a pretty typical house—a storey and a half, no accessible loft, stone walls and no cavity. Obviously, mains gas was not available to her, and the fuels that were available cost much more than on the mainland. Norrie Kerr gave her what was probably quite astute advice, although it was advice that I thought was rather unfortunate.
I do not think that she would have taken it.
I am sure that she would not.
We are all agog to know what the advice was.
I am building the drama here, convener. Norrie Kerr’s advice was that she should move house.
There is a lot in what Mr MacKenzie says. The current measures were designed back in the early 1990s as a quick fix. Loft insulation was a no-brainer. Cavity wall insulation was a wee bit further down the road because it addresses the fabric of the building. However, we do not have measures that are readily available or built into large-scale programmes such as CERT and CESP. There is certainly room for measures such as external wall insulation or internal wall insulation to be built into programmes such as CESP, but they would be a small proportion of what CESP does. Those measures are not replicated on a large scale.
I will pick up on some of Norman Kerr’s points. Looking to the future, the energy company obligation that will come in towards the end of next year includes specific provision for solid-wall insulation. That might provide the householder in Arran with more options that are not available under the current arrangement, as Norman Kerr said. There is some advance up the hierarchy of more expensive but more useful insulation for the hard-to-treat homes, which are one of the big problems.
I absolutely agree with you. Can you give an estimate of what it would cost to bring the housing stock up to modern standards of insulation—let us say the equivalent of 200mm of fibreglass or similar quality insulation in the walls, 300mm in the roof and maybe 150 to 200mm under the floor? Let us say that we have about 2.5 million houses, of which 90 per cent are below current standards. Give me a rough, back-of-a-fag-packet estimate of the cost of retrofitting the housing stock.
Is this the point at which I say that I do not smoke?
According to figures that we produced in 2006, to bring every home in Scotland up to an NHER of 7 would cost £1.7 billion. Time has moved on and we are probably looking for houses to have an NHER of 8, so we could reasonably say that the cost would be £2 billion. However, that is not factoring in either economies of scale or other fabric repairs. You talked about putting insulation between the inner and outer leaves of the building. Sometimes the outer fabric of a building is not suitable to take the internal works.
For the benefit of the official report, it might help if you told us what NHER stands for.
I apologise to the reporter. It stands for national home energy rating. The NHER scheme is equivalent to the Government-backed standard assessment procedure. SAP software is used by home builders and others to calculate a home’s energy efficiency—it is a computer-based programme. NHER is a commercially available software package, which the Scottish house condition survey team uses because it takes account of climatic conditions. The SAP programme does not take account of climate; it is based on a model of a house in Sheffield or Nottingham and assumes that every house of that type will have the same energy demand, irrespective of where it is in the United Kingdom. NHER is more site specific.
Thank you.
Convener, I ask first that the committee look at getting that information. Would Norman Kerr also give us some written information with regard to his own calculation?
Sure.
I am concerned that the cost of what we are talking about—bringing all of the housing stock up to current standards—is understated.
We need to recognise that there will be some housing stock that we will not be able economically to bring up to current standards. We only need to walk 100yd from here to see that, particularly if we are talking to Historic Scotland or others about the intrusive work that would be needed for insulation measures in certain homes. That is why I am suggesting that we need to consider alternative heating solutions for such homes that provide more affordable heating rather than a higher level of insulation.
It would be helpful if you could give us that information, Mr Kerr. The issue is not just one of fuel poverty; the other relevant issue is the amount of carbon emissions we would save if we made the investment.
I suggest to the committee that, perhaps at a future evidence session, the Scottish house condition survey team would be a mine of information. That team provides the information to the cabinet secretary and his officials that is used in the modelling for what needs to be done in rural and urban areas. It has information on a range of things. It can provide further information on its reports, the most recent of which came out in November.
Thank you.
Do you agree that the delay in and uncertainty over the renewable heat incentive are unhelpful to us in designing programmes to take advantage of that UK scheme and are causing difficulty for installers, housing associations and all who would wish to take up the opportunity?
There will be an element of difficulty as not all housing associations will be in the position to tap into the renewable heat incentive—it is a matter of the technology that they would like to apply—but any uncertainty is unhelpful at this time.
Do you therefore agree that the recent announcement on feed-in tariffs for solar photovoltaic panels is disappointing, especially considering the disproportionately small take-up of solar PV feed-in tariffs in Scotland?
The feed-in tariff—the money that goes to the individual consumer—is factored into everybody’s bill. If we continued to expand the feed-in tariff take-up at the same rate, it would have a significant impact on the energy bills of everybody around this table.
I apologise to the convener for going on, but are you concerned—
We are a little short of time.
I will leave it there, then. I might put my question to other witnesses later.
Thank you. I am conscious that three members are keen to ask questions and we are a little short of time.
Good morning. I would like to follow up a couple of points that were touched on earlier. Callum Chomczuk talked about the different schemes and said that, if some people find out what their neighbours have managed to get, they will chase it. That is welcome, but it creates issues as well, because households do not all have the same income. Constituents have contacted me in the past four and a half years to say, “Wee Jeanie down the road got a boiler system. Why can’t I get one?” There are challenges in trying to get the message across about individuals’ entitlements under the schemes, which are based on household incomes.
Yes. Although we are looking forward to state funding to part-fund the schemes, there will always have to be a contribution from householders that depends on their income. As Mike Thornton said, the energy assistance package has four levels of advice and there is a chance that only the lowest, most basic level of energy advice will be applicable. I might not be eligible for stage 4 of the scheme. However, I know that my parents-in-law would be eligible. Even if I recognise that I cannot benefit from the maximum level, we can do some door knocking and build momentum in communities to spread the word.
My experience suggests that, with the change that was made with the introduction of the energy assistance package, there is now a bit more understanding of how the scheme operates. Previously, more people got a new boiler system installed even if the system that they had was not broken. That is now a key element of stage 4.
We do not want to raise expectations too much. As Mike Thornton said, only 40 per cent of referrals to the energy assistance package for insulation at stage 3 are successful, so 60 per cent are unsuccessful. We cannot go to people’s doors, say that we are from the Energy Saving Trust, Age Scotland or whatever and suggest that we are there to give them a brand new boiler and cavity insulation. That would misrepresent the reality. However, by explaining exactly what the landscape is, what is offered and what the householder contribution would be, we can start to tackle the problem in a much more effective way. That is better than taking a reactive approach and hoping that people who are fuel poor will phone in and self-refer.
Norman Kerr touched on the cost of carbon and said that energy companies do not want to go into areas with hard-to-treat houses because of the cost of improving them. Earlier, we heard about the idea of having some kind of intermediary to work alongside energy companies, housing associations and so on. Would your organisation offer that facility to the energy companies? To take a hypothetical situation, if a couple of companies told you that they had been contacted by a couple of people in an area and they wanted to go in, but they did not heat enough homes in that area for it to be economically viable to do so, could you act as an intermediary and go to the other companies to say, “We have been contacted by companies, and we are willing to facilitate your entry into the area, so that there can be economies of scale”?
Over a number of years, a range of small insulation companies have run into difficulties. For example, Fraserburgh Community Business had a company called Buchan Insulation. It has closed its doors in the past few months because there has not been enough work to keep it going. Companies have had problems getting the volume of work that they need to sustain themselves. All the energy companies will have two or three very large contracting companies that they work with. They are very successful and will drive large volumes of work for the companies. However, we are not seeing the same volume of work in the rural areas. We are certainly not set up to offer that, but there is a range of small insulation companies that are in a good position in that regard. A small insulation company in the Western Isles, Tighean Innse Gall, has been operating for many years and is of a size that allows it to take a smaller volume of work. We need to think about how we can support smaller businesses. I know that the cabinet secretary is interested in how we can use small businesses in remote areas to do the one-off jobs that we are talking about. However, we need to ensure that that is viable both for them and for the energy company.
Earlier, we heard about people not continuing to interact after the first point of contact. If an individual has been contacted and has tried to access some help and assistance but has been rejected, they might be demotivated and feel that there is no point trying again, because they are only going to be told that they do not qualify. That might be the case with senior citizens who are living on a small pension that might put them above a certain threshold.
Friends and families of older people who are potentially subject to fuel poverty have a responsibility in that regard. The universal home insulation scheme involves an appropriate sort of door-to-door and community-to-community engagement, whereby people speak to residents to explain what the package could offer them. It does not raise people’s expectations unnecessarily, which we spoke about earlier. By going through a proper assessment of people’s energy needs, the scheme can give a good idea of what they might be entitled to. I agree that the last thing that we should do is overpromise on what the packages might deliver for older people. If we do that, people will disengage from other programmes, regardless of whether they might benefit from them.
I have one final point. The landscape is fairly cluttered, as Chic Brodie said. Given that there are numerous schemes and acronyms, many of which have been mentioned, it is understandable that members of the public might switch off once they have heard about three or four of them. Given that there are different schemes coming in all the time, it is vital that work is done on trusted intermediaries. I take Mike Thornton’s point that the public do not need to fully understand all the schemes that are in operation if there is one place for them to go where there are people who have all the information. That is an important issue to work on. Norman Kerr sent out a strong message on the framework, which I have certainly heard, and I hope that others have, too.
You are absolutely right. This goes back to something that Callum Chomczuk said—we need to think about what the interaction with the client is. It has to be a discussion with the client, which is quite a lengthy interaction. A typical phone call to the network lasts for more than 20 minutes, because it cannot be a scripted conversation or a tick-box, no-no-yes-yes-goodbye conversation. It has to be a conversation about the person’s circumstances. They have to be drawn into the process and talked through what they might be eligible for. That is the approach that is taken with the area-based schemes and nationally, and it is one of the keys to overcoming some of the psychological barriers that exist. I think that it assists if people feel that the person they are talking to is engaging with them to offer advice, rather than being just another contact, is having a conversation that looks into their circumstances and is talking to them on the basis that they are there to help.
I would like to start by getting a clear idea of how many people we expect to be in fuel poverty by the end of this year. In his opening statement, Mike Thornton used a figure of 600,000 people. Norrie Kerr referred to the cabinet secretary’s statement, in which he said that he expected 900,000 people to be in fuel poverty by the end of this year. Can we get a clear idea of how many people we expect to be in fuel poverty this time next month?
The official figure—the figure that is calculated by the statisticians—can be found in the Scottish house condition survey, but it always trails behind the current figure. In reaching the figure of 900,000, I think that the cabinet secretary looked at the calculation that is used by the Scottish house condition survey team, which says that for every percentage point increase in fuel prices, there will be a rise of so many thousand in the number of households in Scotland that are in fuel poverty. That is the calculation that I think the cabinet secretary and his officials did to get the figure of 900,000. The figure that Mike Thornton cited, which is from the Scottish house condition survey, trails behind the current figure, which is 900,000.
Being a data-orientated person, I was quoting from the most recent data available, but I fully agree with Norrie that it is possible to make a projection to the present year and that the present figure is likely to be higher.
There is a time lag.
Yes.
Thank you for that. I just wanted us to be clear about the figures that we are working to, which become crucial as we try to address fuel poverty. They depend on what measure we use to define fuel poverty. The current definition is that people who spend more than 10 per cent of their disposable income on energy costs are in fuel poverty, but the UK Government has commissioned the Hills review to look at that definition.
We need to look at what we are doing in Scotland, where the definition is based not on disposable income but on all income before housing costs. Some time ago, the Government said that it would report against both definitions—in other words, against disposable income and total household income. The 900,000 figure that I have given the committee is based on total income, which includes mortgage interest relief, school meals and other things.
I will let Yvonne MacDermid in, as she has not said anything for a while.
On the percentages, the welfare reform that is in the pipeline will have a catastrophic effect on people who are already in debt, because many of them will not receive the benefits that they currently receive. I understand where all the current figures have come from, but we need to future proof the figures, given that an awful lot more people will be in the bracket of being fuel poor. I just want to flag that up to the committee. The welfare reform is not here yet, but projections show that, when it comes, it will have a huge impact. I predict that it will put more people into poverty and it will certainly result in more people having debt problems.
I echo much of what Norrie Kerr said. The heart of the Hills review is the suggestion that the definition of fuel poverty is too sensitive to price increases. It is absolutely appropriate to re-examine the definition because the 10 per cent figure has been used for some time, but fuel prices are absolutely the biggest driver of fuel poverty among older people. Scottish Government research suggests that a 5 per cent increase in fuel prices pushes 46,000 more households into fuel poverty. That affects all types of household, but particularly older people. Age Scotland would have big concerns about moving to a definition that did not reflect the fact that price has the single biggest impact on fuel poverty.
Yvonne MacDermid talked about the welfare reform that is coming and the potential cuts in household incomes for those who are on benefits, but we also face a situation in which pay has almost stagnated and fuel prices are increasing. There is an impact on the elderly, because their pensions are almost bouncing along on the same level, while fuel prices continue to rise. Does the panel agree that that will have a bigger impact on fuel poverty?
I think that I understand where you are coming from, but, if we assume that there is a national definition of poverty, any national definition of fuel poverty will, by the nature of its measurement, give Scotland more fuel-poor households. This is about our response to those who are living in fuel poverty, and about how we react to them. Mr MacKenzie made a point earlier about a lady in Arran. Mike Thornton has already picked up the point that, at the moment, our response to that lady would be to give her advice, whereas under the new proposals it will be to direct her towards the green deal, whereby she might be able to access funding, without incurring any up-front cost, that would impact on the energy efficiency of her home. If anyone who is on benefit and unable to provide the capital cost approaches the Government’s energy assistance package, we will react to that and provide them with that funding.
Before I go on to my final question, I just want to put on record my surprise and concern at Norman Kerr’s earlier example of a family living without any hot water. Any council department that does not pick up on such situations in this day and age should be ashamed of itself. Those departments should ensure that no one, and especially not anyone with a young family, lives in housing that falls below tolerable standards. A house without hot water falls below those standards.
Nobody is immediately jumping up to answer that question. I appreciate that the statement was made only yesterday, so it is perhaps a little unfair to ask you for an immediate response to it.
It will need careful consideration. I will need to sit down with my colleagues and study it in greater depth, but I would be happy to share the outcome of that with Mr Wilson.
That would be helpful. Angus MacDonald, have your questions already been covered by others?
Much of what I was going to ask has been covered, especially in Mike MacKenzie’s questions and Norrie Kerr’s answers. As we have heard, there is a high degree of fuel poverty in rural areas, with 40 per cent of households in the Western Isles being hit, even with insulation companies such as Tighean Innse Gall operating at capacity. Other areas of western Scotland and the Orkney Islands are also affected.
The next panel may be able to shed more light on that. The index of multiple deprivation was used for CESP because it was a national, Great Britain-wide programme. Energy Action Scotland and others noted that the difficulty for Scotland was that—as Mr MacDonald said—rural areas would be disadvantaged because of pockets of affluence; however, that fell on deaf ears and we are where we are with CESP. Given that it finishes next year, reviewing the data sets would be like bolting the stable door after the horse has gone, but in any future programmes that the Scottish Government designs, we must take into account the issues of the index of multiple deprivation as opposed to the data sets that we already have, and build around that.
Do you want to add anything, Mr Thornton?
No. Norrie Kerr has covered all the points that I would have made. I agree with him.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that it has been a long session. I thank all our witnesses for coming and for their evidence. We will have a short suspension to allow a changeover of witnesses.
We are a bit behind the clock, and I apologise to the second panel of witnesses for keeping them waiting. We have representatives on the panel from local authorities and energy companies. We do not intend—if we can help it—to revisit the evidence session on energy prices that we held in June, so it would be helpful if members could avoid pursuing that matter in depth. We are here to consider fuel poverty and the action that is being taken to try to address it.
I work for Scottish and Southern Energy. I am a CERT and CESP project manager, so I work specifically on the energy efficiency programmes and the delivery thereof in order for us to meet our targets.
I am director of regulation for Scottish Power.
I am a senior domestic energy officer with Aberdeen City Council.
I am the principal engineer at Highland Council. I deal with energy matters and support our housing colleagues in delivery.
I am the managing director of Scottish Gas.
Thank you for joining us. When the committee took evidence on the Scottish Government’s budget, one of the issues that arose was the fact that it was difficult to obtain data on how much the energy companies spend under CERT. Given the importance of such programmes, can the energy company representatives tell us exactly what their input is in that regard? You heard some of the earlier evidence session, in which we heard how significant such programmes are in addressing fuel poverty.
People tend to look at the programmes in terms of their estimated cost, which the Government set out in the impact assessments that led to the programmes being put in place. Broadly, it involves adding something like £25 to £30 per fuel bill. From that, it can be worked out that the cost of the programmes amounts to several billion pounds. Obviously, the energy companies, as part of competition, try to deliver the programmes more cheaply, which is an incentive that drives us to be more efficient. The macro picture is that the programmes are very large and spending on them is substantial.
I agree. The spend creates about £25 to £30 on the consumer’s bill. Scottish Gas spends in Scotland about 9 per cent of the UK spend on CERT, which is equitable across our customer base. Our comparable spend on CESP is about 27 per cent, so we see a far bigger concentration of CESP spend in Scotland from British Gas on behalf of Scottish Gas.
I echo my energy colleagues’ points. For SSE, our CERT spend is roughly 10 per cent, and more than 25 per cent of our CESP projects are based in Scotland.
On that last point, I have a question for Lindsey Restrick and Kevin Roxburgh. I know how much you spend in comparison with down south. However, how does the take-up of schemes compare with what you believe to be the demand? I understand that there might have been difficulty in some cases in finding out who the actual clients might be.
Without wanting to repeat what has probably already been said—we heard a snippet of the earlier evidence—there are a number of barriers and there are concerns about whether we are reaching the right people. A number of schemes exist and there is a bewildering choice for customers. I hope that it comes as no surprise to any of my colleagues when I say that we are finding it more difficult to reach the low-hanging fruit. A Scottish housing quality standard report said that the figure for virgin lofts is now only 3 per cent.
What are you doing to overcome the barriers? As an energy company, how proactive are you in finding the client base?
Given the resources that you have, I would have thought that you would not need such help and that you could be proactive in finding those people. How engaged are you with local authorities in finding the client base and in proactively ensuring that we optimise insulation and minimise fuel poverty?
Earlier in the meeting, we heard about problems in finding clients. Norrie Kerr talked about the difficulties. Perhaps the council representatives will comment. Social work departments must have some means of capturing information about pockets of fuel poverty or individuals who are fuel poor. What engagement do councils have with the fuel companies? How do you find the problem clients?
It can be difficult to identify individual households, but we can identify areas. We have our housing database and we use the Scottish index of multiple deprivation. HEED is not that great, because it is a new database and there are not many properties on it—
Hang on a second. For the benefit of the official report, let me say that although I know that some people here are comfortable and familiar with acronyms, it is not always particularly helpful to use them.
HEED is the home energy efficiency database, which the Scottish Government introduced. In years to come it will probably be a useful tool, but currently it shows where measures have been applied and not where they have not been applied. It is one tool that can be used in trying to determine where the fuel poverty is.
So there is no real targeting.
There is targeting. For more than the past 10 years, we have taken an area-based approach, going round every area. There is fuel poverty in every area; to assume that fuel poverty is only here but not there would be wrong. As a duty to our tenants and to everyone in the city, we have to take a city-wide approach and tackle every area. We take a double approach: our area-based scheme has been running for 12 years now, and a city-wide scheme runs at the same time.
In the previous evidence session, we heard about the proliferation of people trying to penetrate the market, and it was suggested that a national housing framework was needed. Last year in Scotland, domestic gas usage declined by 19 per cent, but the figures were different in different councils. I have heard what has been said about targeting and what have you, but are there discussions among councils on best practice? Is there any homogeneity of approach in sharing problems, or successes, in overcoming fuel poverty in certain areas?
A number of key groups are linked. In Highland Council, we reach out to registered social landlords and other councils, and we share what we are doing. That is beneficial, because we do not want to repeat mistakes that we or others may have made. We want to learn together and move forward together. Another benefit is that programmes can be shared. Work and opportunities can be combined in order to have a wider impact.
Before I ask my final question, I note that I declared an interest earlier. We have been talking about the impact of energy efficiency measures on domestic users, or the end clients, but what connections do you have with companies and businesses to help them with energy efficiency? If companies could be more energy efficient, thereby reducing their costs substantially, it might lead to higher incomes for individuals and therefore less fuel poverty. Despite increasing fuel prices, people might be able to afford the fuel that they need.
That question had a slightly tortuous link to fuel poverty.
But I think that I have proved the link, convener.
It was a fair question to ask but, in considering commercial enterprises, it moved slightly away from the scope of our inquiry.
If my suggestion freed up income, it would take people out of fuel poverty.
Locally, we funded an energy advice centre to fill gaps in provision, but now there are the Government energy saving Scotland advice centres, with a business adviser. We have therefore withdrawn and do not provide that service any more. The link is through the Scottish Government’s network of energy saving Scotland advice centres. It could be argued that, if another person was doing that too, they could get round more businesses. However, I would not win that argument with our finance department.
We have worked with businesses on, for example, small microrenewables projects. We have also worked with Inverness College, for example, to offer opportunities and training to businesses. That should stimulate the market and economy in the Highlands.
I am no expert on the business-to-business side, but as a supplier I know that Scottish Gas and British Gas have installed many smart meters in commercial premises to allow businesses to manage their energy consumption more efficiently.
Those meters do not reduce usage; they just tell people how much they are using.
They give people knowledge and insight, which allows them to make choices and take steps towards being more energy efficient.
Different types of commercial customer have different approaches. There is a class of commercial customer that uses a great deal of energy, and optimising their usage is an important part of the economics of their business. Typically, they have energy managers whose job is to mitigate and optimise energy costs and consumption. In other businesses, energy competes with other issues for management attention and decisions are taken about how to prioritise them.
My remit is in the domestic energy efficiency market, but I know that Scottish and Southern Energy has recently been involved with a social enterprise in a small initiative to provide energy efficiency advice to businesses. We work with organisations to improve their energy efficiency. I do not have any figures or specific information on whether the savings are passed on to their employees or what have you, so I cannot comment on that.
Thank you. It is an important point. If we can help businesses to reduce their costs, the money that was freed up could be directed to people’s incomes and therefore take some heat—if I can use that word—out of the fuel poverty spectrum.
Good morning, panel. Chic Brodie touched on a potential framework, which was discussed in some detail earlier. Aligned to that, we heard about the postcode lottery. What is the best way forward to ensure that the services that are delivered to the public are consistent throughout the country? Should there be an even tighter framework between those who deliver services on the ground and the Government?
Do you mean in relation to fuel poverty in particular?
Yes.
The key element is that we are clear about the definition of fuel poverty. That was discussed at length in the earlier session. Once we have the definition, it is clear that, in Scotland in particular, rural communities tend to have more issues and more significant problems. All the data that I see tells me that.
I agree. In Highland, we have a lot of highly exposed houses, which are often on their own, well away from towns and other larger groups of housing. They become a bit more vulnerable in the round and need a bit more help but, unfortunately, it tends to cost more to do anything to them. When UHIS 1 was launched, some of our more rural houses that were proposed for the scheme were taken out of it simply because of the cost. However, if the schemes had been combined we might have got a better cost for all the houses.
Sorry, will you say what that programme is?
Sorry. It is the universal home insulation scheme. The biggest benefit of the scheme so far is that it has gone to people rather than let people come back.
This is a tricky matter. I am cautious about too many top-down attempts to say where the programmes are delivered. With CESP, that backfired badly because it was targeted at particular areas, which meant that many areas, including rural ones, lost out. If there had been a broader design to the scheme, it would have been possible to help more people more efficiently. It is a shame that we are not able to deliver CESP in rural areas.
Although I agree that there should be a tighter delivery framework, what we offer needs to remain diverse. The universal home insulation scheme worked better because it was led and delivered by local authorities. As it turns out, we know better what is needed in our areas than a national organisation would if it was not engaging with us to find out what was needed and then delivering a programme around it.
I would not necessarily advocate that we scrap all the schemes at the moment. However, we have specifically targeted more rural areas, where possible, within the confines of CESP. We have four projects in the Highland region, and we recently considered extending those projects and offering the measures to non-local-authority tenants—that has not been addressed within CESP. I do not know what mention was made of a postcode lottery in your previous evidence session, but we have noticed that people are either in CESP or they are not. The rigidity to which Rupert Steele alluded is such that there is no room for negotiation. We have even found that, in many areas, the issue might be divisive. Some people who want to take up the measures cannot do so; they cannot take the opportunity that the project represents.
We have heard a range of interesting answers, particularly from Mr Christie, whose point about short-termism is valid. I am not sure about scrapping all the schemes, but I am a firm believer in the KISS method—keep it simple, stupid.
At a basic level, in all our communications, including all our billing communications, to all our customers, we offer the consumer a telephone number that they can contact to get direct independent advice if they need it.
I am not sure that energy companies can fulfil the role by themselves—and neither can the other agencies that are involved.
I agree with that. In order to get the trust of consumers, the intermediary should probably be a body that is Government backed or independent of the market and therefore has no gain to make.
We have had a high degree of success in working with local authorities to identify some opportunities. Since 1 April 2011, about one third of all the cavities and lofts that we have insulated have been in Scotland, and a lot of that work has come from partnerships with local authorities that have worked very well.
I will come at that from the point of view of data protection. Are you telling me that you, as a commercial company, deal with a Government body that provides information to people on low incomes?
No. The Government is writing to them—
Who is sponsoring that?
The industry has paid for the letter.
So the industry has paid the DWP to write to people on low incomes—
The letter says, “If you would like insulation, this is how you can get it.” It is a welcome development that is in the interests of those people—it gives them a chance to ensure that they get insulation. I think that the letter has been signed by Chris Huhne.
I do not care who it is signed by as long as it complies with data protection, and as long as the people who receive it are protected by data protection rules. It seems to me to be a most unusual arrangement, but I have had my say.
I assume that there is no problem with data protection. If the letter goes out from the DWP it does not matter who pays for it.
I had completed my point that a diversity of routes is really valuable as a way of getting to the various types of property that need to be insulated.
I agree with the other panel members about the complexity of the landscape—there is no getting away from that.
Mr Steele talked about the work that the DWP is doing to get the message over to households in receipt of benefits. Ms Restrick has just highlighted one of the problems, which is that that does not target everybody who is income poor.
I am not aware of such an initiative, but it is an interesting idea. I will take it away and perhaps ask whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer would like to write to working people on low incomes to draw their attention to the same key issues.
Mr Roxburgh, you touched on your agreements with the CABx. Of the 32 local authorities in Scotland, only one—Inverclyde—does not have a CAB. What activity do you undertake with the bodies in Inverclyde?
On your point about Inverclyde, as I said earlier, we are looking to expand our relationship with the voluntary sector and not rely only on the CABx. I will take that issue away and think about what we can do in Inverclyde.
I can speak to you about that later.
Thank you.
Do not feel that you have to comment, Mr Steele, although you are welcome to do so if you want.
At the moment, tariffs are significantly simpler than most people think that they are. There is a basic choice to start off with. Most companies in the industry have one or two fixed offers and a variable offer, and there will obviously be different payment methods around those. There are 14 different regional charges, but people do not have a choice between those charges; they will simply go with the practice that applies in their region. There are also issues around heating tariffs. For example, people with electric heating need special discounted electricity rates at night to charge up their storage radiators, otherwise their bills would go through the roof.
Just to add to the confusion around helplines, I met representatives from Energy UK last week, and it has a home heat helpline, which redirects consumers to one of the six major suppliers. I take on board Kevin Christie’s point that there should perhaps be only one helpline that is independent of the energy suppliers.
There are several issues with smart meters and I will try to cover them one by one.
In a lot of cases, smart meters might not help the individual that much. It is fine to have the information, but people need to be able to take in that information and make choices. Smart meters might help advice organisations to identify the fuel poor so that they can tell them they can save money. Some customers will use smart meters but it will depend on how easy they are to use. Some people cannot control their heating systems, and I assume that smart meters will be slightly more complex than a straightforward controller for the central heating.
Smart meters and the information that they provide will be helpful to consumers. If consumers are more aware of how their bill is building up, they will be able to look for economies if they want to or plan other expenditure so that they are in better shape to manage their bills. It will be helpful for people who have difficulty budgeting to have better information, because that will give them more opportunities to be more efficient in their energy use.
I do not think that the technology alone will necessarily help, but we would welcome anything that gives a consumer insight into their energy use and opens up a dialogue that allows us to do what we can to help customers to reduce their energy use through energy efficiency measures.
With regard to the phase 3 roll-out, I guess that we are unlikely to reach the target by 2016. Presumably it will not be fully rolled out by then, if phase 3 is still at an early stage.
Scottish Gas and British Gas plan to do a significant ramp-up of smart meter deployment in 2013. We have sizeable numbers—tens of thousands—of meters on walls today that are of the phase 2 type. There will be more phase 3 meters in 2012, but the big ramp-up, involving significant numbers, will take place in 2013.
As a courtesy to our third witness, who has been waiting patiently, we should try to draw a line under our questioning of this panel by 12.20. I ask Mike MacKenzie and John Wilson to keep their questions fairly brief.
I am working on my brevity, convener. First, I declare an interest: my community benefited greatly from the Scottish Gas green streets programme, which provided a range of energy efficiency measures. I did not benefit from that personally, but I have a warm place in my heart for Scottish Gas as a result of the programme. I also take this opportunity to thank Scottish Gas for its helpful intervention in the saving of the Mid Argyll swimming pool. Without apology, I am giving Scottish Gas a wee plug here.
To be honest, I think that the link to fuel poverty is rather tenuous, but I will let Mr Roxburgh answer the question.
I am sorry that you say that, because I think that you are incorrect. That is one of the aspects of the subject on which education is required, which I will happily talk to you about later.
I think that Norrie Kerr answered the question in the previous session. My view is that the feed-in tariff is linked to the cost of the installation and the technology. The price of the technology will come down—I understand and accept that—but at this point in time, I believe that a kick-start is needed. Anything that we can do in the short term to give a kick-start down the PV route would be helpful. It was disappointing to see the feed-in tariff being cut to such an extent so early in the technology’s deployment. At this point in time, I believe that it would be right to do anything that gave a bit of support for and kick-started the PV programme but, in the long term, the tariff should be cost-reflective.
Thanks.
I cannot speak directly for my planning colleagues, but we have been looking quite closely at the contribution that microrenewables can make to tackling fuel poverty. They perform a role, in that they reduce the amount of energy that people have to acquire to heat the house to the standard that they want. That is quite a big driver for the roll-out of the technology.
Prior to working for Aberdeen City Council, I spent six years in renewables development mainly for domestic and small-scale community use, so I am quite aware of the frustrations with the inconsistencies of planning offices. It is certainly something on which we have had engagement. Prior to working for the council, I had a sort of ready-reckoner that helped people to know what the likelihood was of their proposal being acceptable. The information is there. If someone is interested, support is available and is being provided on a more consistent basis in the city, so it is more helpful than it was. There has been a big improvement.
Are your planning colleagues fully on board with the need to tackle fuel poverty and the need for their planning policies to be directed at least partially to that end?
No—fuel poverty will not be the driver for them. They are more aware of what the microgen technologies are, and they are more supportive of them than they were, but not from a fuel poverty perspective—that is not the main driver.
I have a point to add on feed-in tariffs. It is important to recognise that the feed-in tariffs are paid for by other consumers. It was projected that, at its previous level, the feed-in tariff for photovoltaics would, within a very short time, add something like £26 to the average electricity bill of everyone across the country. Against that background, I think that the Government had no choice but to address the issue.
I am glad that you raised that point. Are you aware that the uptake of the feed-in tariff for solar PV in Scotland is less than 1 per cent of that in England and that most of the uptake is in the south of England? Do you therefore agree that consumers in Scotland are subsidising people in the south of England through the feed-in tariff for solar PV? That seems to be the effect of the situation that you describe.
Scottish Power has always been sceptical of those very high-level tariffs—
I ask you to answer my specific question.
To be fair, that is a matter of Government policy. You can put the question to the witnesses, but it is not necessary for Scottish Power to give an answer. If Mr Steele wishes to comment, he is welcome to, but it is not really a question for him.
I am happy to withdraw the question.
The only observation that I would make is that photovoltaic panels tend to work best in sunnier places.
I have one brief further question.
You are eating into Mr Wilson’s time, so you will need to be very brief.
Convener, I have a quick comment on the feed-in tariff. Mike MacKenzie is right that the feed-in tariff did not work for PV in Scotland. However, I hope that the renewable heat incentive can work the other way and help us to recover some losses, because we have higher heating tariffs. That might not happen—it depends on whether the scheme is based on the EPC or the NHER.
Hold on a second—that is more acronyms from Mr Christie.
Sorry. They are the energy performance certificate and the national home energy rating. I was listening when Norrie Kerr explained the difference, which is that the NHER takes location into account, whereas the EPC does not.
Thank you. I have no further questions, convener.
Right. I come to John Wilson.
Given the time that I have been allotted, I will try to be brief with my three questions.
That is the case—it is difficult to hit the targets. Phil Bentley, the managing director of British Gas, wrote to Chris Huhne just last week stating that we do not believe that the targets are achievable in the current programme. Therefore, we are seeking an extension and dialogue on how we can improve the programmes so that we have a win-win for consumers and suppliers, and so that the Government gets what it wants. We do not believe that the current targets are achievable.
We have grave concerns about the deliverability of the targets. They have an excessive micro-detail that does not relate to the reality of delivering them on the ground. For example, CESP has the concept of saving notional carbon, which is not the same as real carbon. Many times more notional carbon savings are achieved if lots of measures are put into one home. However, the suppliers find that it is not possible to put as many measures into each home as was thought would be possible, so the measures have to be put into different homes. We end up with the bizarre situation that we are saving more real carbon than the target but less notional carbon, because of the complicated formula that is used to calculate it.
I simply reiterate my energy colleagues’ comments. CESP’s rigidity is proving quite challenging—she said, with some understatement—and we have already discussed CERT’s new focus and targets as a result of the extension to the super-priority group, the insulation obligation and what have you. It all comes on the back of a number of like-minded cavity and loft insulation programmes, transformations of programmes and variations on a theme. For example, we have gone from standards of performance to the energy efficiency commitment to EEC 2 and finally to CERT. We hope that we can take advantage of the low-hanging fruit, particularly now that we have a game-changer in the form of the green deal and the energy company obligation, but I agree with my colleagues that we are finding the schemes quite challenging.
I thank Ms Restrick for using the low-hanging fruit analogy, which has been mentioned twice already today. What kind of big stick do we need to reach the higher-hanging fruit in order to resolve the current problems? The energy companies and our first panel of witnesses have said that getting the low-hanging fruit is easy enough, but what about the more difficult-to-reach households that need more help and support? How do we put those targets in place? I suspect that, given the time, you will have to send answers on a postcard.
I ask the panel to comment very briefly.
Indeed. Private sector landlords can be dealt with in a relatively simple and straightforward way through legislation. For example, we have the SHQS for social housing providers and the same measure could be made to apply to private landlords to ensure that, in those circumstances, properties could not be rented out.
I am sorry, Mr Christie, but what does SHQS stand for?
Scottish housing quality standard. There are too many acronyms.
My postcard reads as follows: we can deliver more expensive measures, if the householder is willing to have them—there is a bit of a question about owner-occupiers’ appetite for solid wall insulation. We can deliver that, but it is very costly. If the programme might cost 10 times as much as the existing insulation programme, that means either that we will have to go 10 times more slowly or that we will have to put 10 times more money on bills to pay for it, and there is a question about whether that would be in consumers’ interests.
Data is the key to reaching out and insulating the houses that we have not got to. Scottish Gas has ring fenced £20 million for insulation for Scottish customers. We understand and accept that there is a high cost in homes that are more difficult to treat, so we have ring fenced money for that. However, data is key to identifying the target audience and how we can get to them.
If the Parliament goes down the legislation route, the key point is that the legislation must enable us practically and realistically to identify and target the people who are most in need. That is the bottom line. Whatever legislation is brought in, it must take account of the volumes and it must enable people who need insulation to get it.
Thank you all—
Convener, in view of the comments about contact between the energy suppliers and the DWP, which I regard as a serious situation, I ask that you write to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Mr Chris Huhne, to ask for details of how much the supplier companies are paying for the use of a large Government database and what conditions pertain thereto. Will you also write to the Information Commissioner’s Office to determine whether, if information is being passed to the supply companies, the Data Protection Act 1998 is being breached?
On the clerk’s advice, I suggest that we look into the issues further. I will be happy to come back to you when we have done so. You have raised a legitimate concern, although I must say that I am not concerned that there is a data protection issue. I will take advice and come back to you at our next meeting with a suggested course of action.
I would prefer to go through the committee, convener.
I was suggesting that I bring the issue to the committee at our next meeting, if you are happy with such a course of action.
Thank you.
I thank the witnesses for coming. I appreciate that this has been a long meeting.
In our third and final panel, I welcome Richard Atkins, from the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. I apologise that we are slightly overrunning this morning. Thank you for coming.
I am delighted that the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland has been invited to provide witness evidence. I am a practising architect and I sit on the national council of the royal incorporation. I also chair a sustainability task group. I have been very involved in establishing our energy design certification scheme, which was approved by Scottish ministers in 2007, and our sustainable building design accreditation scheme, which accredits architects who have greater skills in sustainability. I have also been involved in establishing the on construction domestic energy assessors scheme with the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists and the Royal Institute of British Architects in England and Wales. That is my background—I am not quite sure how it happened, but I seem to have wandered into what is perhaps the energy cul-de-sac of building design.
I attended an event a couple of weeks ago with committee colleagues at which a speaker said that the current strategy for energy efficiency cavity wall insulation is having a detrimental impact on some homes and queried whether such insulation could be detrimental for the type of house build that it is currently being put into. Could you comment on that?
I echo that cautionary view. As you can imagine, the royal incorporation is very supportive of any initiatives that deal with energy efficiency, sustainability and fuel poverty. The influence of the built environment on people’s wellbeing is huge. It is outrageous that, in the 21st century, we have houses that are poorly insulated and suffer from condensation.
This is all very informative, but I think that you are at risk of getting a little bit too technical for some members of the committee, myself included. What we really want to know in response to Mr Wilson’s question is simply whether there are issues with cavity insulation.
There can be, yes.
Clearly, there are.
That is not to say that cavity insulation should not be part of the mix of measures to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy bills.
Convener, I was enjoying Mr Atkins’s technical knowledge of cavity walls and the insulation measures that can be put in place. There is an issue here. In the past decade, lots of money has been spent on the installation of cavity wall insulation, but it might have had a detrimental impact on some of the properties in which it has been installed.
That is an extremely good question. We have perhaps missed a major opportunity, although we can recover from that. You discussed the production of energy performance certificates earlier. The background is that the certificate is just a piece of paper that gives the consumer information about the theoretical energy use of their building. It is asset rated; just like the information on miles per gallon that someone is told when they buy a car, it is based on a standard set of assumptions about how the person is going to use the building. The calculation is done by taking well over 100 inputs and mungeing them through a complex algorithm to produce quite a simple answer.
You talked about part 6 of the building standards and the SAP calculation. I am sure that you will agree that that favours renewable heat devices and microgeneration and so on. Have you come across any problems with planning authorities when, in designing a house that will comply with energy standards, you have found that you have to use some of those devices yet the planners are not keen on them?
That is a very real problem, probably less so for new dwellings but certainly in refurbishments, particularly in our historic cities, where certain views are considered as extremely important and there is resistance to putting on photovoltaic roof panels or solar hot water panels.
You would agree with me though that some of those technologies can offer solutions for fuel poverty.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet. A raft of measures, regulations, legislation, incentives, technologies and simple housekeeping will be needed to solve the problem.
On a slightly different theme, what you would say if you were called in as an architect to give energy advice for a typical house that was built in 1960 and your brief was to bring that dwelling up to current standards of insulation that would comply with the SAP 2010 calculation? Will you talk us through that, in layman’s terms? What would be the practical implications and costs of that, if it were possible?
Anything is possible, obviously, and it is down to cost. That is a good question, which highlights the trigger point for a refurbishment. I have done projects in properties dating from the 1950s in which we can demonstrate an 80 per cent carbon reduction and for which the trigger point was the requirement for thorough refurbishment. Everything including the services, the electrics and the decoration had reached the end of their lives. The additional insulation requirements might be a combination of internal wall insulation, external wall insulation and cavity insulation, depending on what had been built up in the existing property. We would bring loft insulation up to the full standard of one foot of insulation without thinking about it, as long as the ventilation in the roof space was controlled, and we would install an efficient heating system.
As you know, about 30 per cent of the housing stock has been designated as being hard to heat, more in the middle range is a bit easier to deal with, and a small percentage that was built recently is well insulated. What would be the rough cost of bringing the energy efficiency of those first categories of homes up to standard, given that one would have to foot the bill for all the other things that would have to be done? Could you give me an idea of the cost per dwelling? We could multiply that by 2.2 million, which is the approximate number of dwellings that are not so energy efficient.
I am fond of doing back-of-the-envelope calculations, but to do this one could create a huge hostage to fortune. A deep refurbishment project to completely meet all the standards for a dwelling could easily cost between £500 and £600 per square metre. If we are talking about dealing with the bulk of the problem—applying the Pareto principle and getting 80 per cent of the way there and not reaching the stringent 2010 standards, which will increase by 30 per cent in 2013—we would adopt the low-hanging-fruit solutions about which we have been talking. We would replace the boiler, install thermostatic radiator valves, insulate the roof and draught-proof or replace the windows. All that could probably be done with a budget of £5,000 to £10,000, depending on the size of the house. The low-hanging fruit will be obvious, and dealing with it will pay for itself but—as an earlier witness said—we seem to have come to the end of the low-hanging fruit. Reaching the high-hanging fruit involves using a very long stick.
I have a final brief question. John Wilson talked about cavity wall insulation. Can you give us an idea—perhaps using U-value or some layman’s term—of how effective filling a 50mm or 2in cavity with insulation is in improving the overall energy efficiency of a home?
It is potentially very significant. Calculation methods for insulation values are relatively simple, but how accurate they are in reality can be questioned. I recently co-authored for Historic Scotland a report on some properties in which it was interested. In parallel to that, live U-value tests were done. In calculating U-value, there is a theoretical calculation, but live tests can also be done on site. Live tests tend to show that the overall U-value for a traditional Scottish construction is a bit better than the theoretical calculation would suggest. The calculation will be quite linear, so as insulation is added, the U-value steadily gets better. The way in which that translates into energy use in a dwelling is quite different. In terms of energy costs, the energy that is required to heat a dwelling is not linear. It is like a—I do not know what it is called.
Do you mean a parabola?
Yes, it is parabolic. Basically, if you take a slice of that out at the bottom, you can see that there is a much greater impact in terms of the energy that you are saving than if you take out the same slice at the top. That is a short way of saying that adding even relatively little insulation has a big impact. That addition of more insulation has progressively less impact.
Perhaps I could rephrase the question. Without getting into quadratic equations, I am trying to get at how effective filling a 2in cavity is compared with the modern house that complies with the current standards. How close does it come?
I am trying to avoid giving a technical answer. On U-values, it is possible to get pretty close. However, the regulations do not purely work by driving U-values.
Okay, let me put the question another way. If I was building the wall of a modern dwelling-house using polystyrene, polyurethane or even polyisocyanate insulation, what thickness of the material of which you put 50mm into the cavity of an older house would I need to put into the wall?
If a high-performance poly-type product was being used, as opposed to mineral wool or sheep’s wool, the thickness would probably be in the order of 80mm to 100mm.
That would be 100mm of what material?
It would be something like expanded polystyrene board.
Will you check that and write to the committee on it?
I would be more than happy to go away and do the calculation. Different insulations all have different resistivity values, which can vary extensively within families of products. It is an interesting exercise, which I will do and on which I will report back.
Domestic gas usage has dropped by about 19 per cent over the past five years, while non-domestic gas usage has dropped and then increased. What is your view on that? Gas usage varies substantially throughout Scotland from council area to council area. How much do local authorities engage with you at the early design stage? How well are they embracing energy efficiency?
I am sorry: will you remind me of the first point?
My point was that domestic gas usage has gone down by 19 per cent, whereas non-domestic usage has not.
The drop in domestic gas usage is probably indicative of the success of some of the boiler replacement, loft insulation and cavity wall insulation programmes. I suspect that the relative growth of the economy from the mid-1990s up until the crash in 2008 is a factor in the non-domestic usage.
I imagine that the face-to-face discussions would take place more with housing associations and local authorities than with individual households.
Absolutely—because the investment in cost terms of that discussion and input is relatively small in proportion to the scale of the projects that local authorities and housing associations deal with.
With regard to the technical and planning changes that have taken place in recent years, what has been beneficial to what you do and to helping to tackle fuel poverty? What changes would you like the Scottish Government to make over the course of this parliamentary session?
I am delighted to have been asked to represent the Royal Incorporation of Architects on the working group that will deal with improvements to section 6 of the Building (Scotland) Regulations for 2013. The Government has made big strides, in terms of raising the performance threshold, At the moment that performance—for obvious reasons—relates to new buildings. Some elements of section 6 encourage consequential improvement; that is, it suggests that people who want to build extensions should also consider other things. Such elements have to be built on, although that still covers only a relatively small number of dwellings.
Thank you for your attendance. I am sorry that we delayed you for some time, but you have been very helpful.
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