Chamber and committees

As you say, the circumstances in some communities lend themselves more to heat networks than to other solutions. In large parts of my constituency, many houses are half a mile or more away from others. The circumstances of such areas do not lend themselves to some solutions, although plenty of other sustainable forms of heating would meet their requirements. There might be areas that we can concentrate on. We look to other countries—everyone looks to the example of Copenhagen, where a huge proportion of the population in that urban area is looking at heat networks. I have met a number of the companies that are involved and have offered encouragement and as much certainty as we can provide about investment in heat networks in the future.

We are taking a great number of combined measures to try to bring down emissions from buildings. We are conscious that, as a country, 20 per cent of our carbon emissions come from our buildings, and we will have to address that fact if we are to reach the ambitious targets that we all have for 2045.

There are individual schemes, which I am sure the committee will want to ask about. For instance, there is our heat in buildings programme and our budget for that, and we also have the area-based schemes for improving the energy efficiency of people’s houses and, we hope, reducing emissions. We must do all that work hand in hand with an effort to ensure that anything that we do in that sphere does not have the unintended consequence of putting people into poverty.

Those are a few of the things that we are doing. Perhaps the officials might want to add something to that list.

Yes, it is certainly welcome. From memory, the figure that has been quoted is 6 per cent of installations, and, yes—it would apply across the UK.

The Government has funded the service for more than 15 years, and the Energy Saving Trust administers the Home Energy Scotland advice service on our behalf. Demand for the service has been high, although it has decreased from the 138,000 households that the service supported in 2022-23. As a Government, we are committed to ensuring that the funding is applied to ensure that the advice service exists in the future, and the Scottish Government regularly reviews the grant to ensure that that happens.

I reiterate that both the difficulty of working during Covid and the cost of materials in its wake were deterrents to many contractors.

I should be clear that, although we are awaiting important information from the UK Government, which we are having good conversations with, I am not suggesting that the timing of our decisions about the bill is based on any of that information.

UK Government decisions are nonetheless relevant. As you are aware, there is an on-going conversation about electricity pricing, the relative price of electricity and gas, the review of electricity market arrangements and the reform of many parts of the network. The decisions that the UK Government takes will clearly interact with our own legislation.

I will bring in others to talk about some of the conversations that we are having.

My predecessor, Patrick Harvie, made it clear that that particular target was not achievable. I agree with Mr Harvie on that. It is as well that the Government comes to the Parliament and presents targets that are achievable. It is not honest to do anything else.

I will bring you in, Gareth. The figures that I have for annual heat pump installations are as follows: 2,448 in 2019; 2,993 in 2020; 4,667 in 2021; 5,146 in 2022; and 6,388 in 2023. The importance of heat pumps in our effort to decarbonise and improve Scotland’s housing stock is increasingly significant as the years go by.

As you mentioned, the cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy review is probably the place where those issues should be mentioned. I am perhaps overemphasising the point about the numbers, but we can only go by the evidence that we have on new builds.

The 83 new-build houses that have wood-burning stoves as their main fuel are, as I mentioned, outside four cities and scattered across the rest of the country. I think that I am right in saying that there are four houses scattered across the rest of the country that use wood-burning stoves as a secondary fuel.

I do not say any of that to be complacent. The Government would certainly want to act if there was evidence that the problem that you describe was happening.

I will bring in officials on that point. We always seek to ensure that any measure that we take is effective. From our point of view, “effective” would mean that our amendment had taken account of the concerns that were brought to us, which were that there are rural parts of Scotland where—because of the prevailing climate, off-grid gas and limited opportunities to install various types of heating—wood-burning or peat-burning stoves represent a realistic option for people. Even in those areas of rural Scotland, most new homes are not reliant on such forms of heating. Officials may want to come in on how we would measure that.