Chamber and committees

A range of discussions have taken place not only with individual potential investors—the Scottish Government has an investor panel that advises it—but through the green heat finance task force. As the committee knows, that has now been meeting for some significant time. Its first report will be due out very soon, alongside the imminent consultation on the heat in buildings proposals more generally. The expectation is that the first phase of that task force report will focus on individual approaches and that the second phase report will look at the more communal, area-based approaches, which might include greater focus on heat networks. A significant amount of work is happening in that area.

Yes. The legislation that was passed in the previous session of the Scottish Parliament to get the work under way was done before we knew that the United Kingdom Energy Act 2023 was coming, so we have taken account of some of the changes that took place in that. The committee will be very pleased to know that there were some areas where the Scottish and UK Governments were able to work together on useful changes to that energy legislation, in particular in dealing with some of the consumer protection issues. However, some other changes require us to perhaps reconsider some aspects of how we approach the implementation of the Scottish heat networks act. For example, in the light of the UK legislative changes, we will consider our approach to permitting and consenting and ensure that we have got the balance right. Over the course of time, there will no doubt be other legislative changes.

A critical thing that we are still awaiting from the UK Government is the rebalancing of electricity and gas prices. Whether the current UK Government makes good on that or whether we have to wait on a successor Government, we know that that is one of the critical issues that will spur not only the viability of decarbonisation of heat but its attractiveness. For example, as we decarbonise existing heat networks, some of them will shift over to using devices such as heat pumps as one of their energy sources. If those are using electricity rather than gas, that is great to decarbonise those existing networks, but the rebalancing of prices will be one of the things that are critical to making that viable and attractive to customers.

As I said, we have been exploring a number of different models for the development and operation. We think that it will be an attractive area for private investment, but we also know that there is a need for the public sector to give leadership, particularly at local level, where local authorities understand both the building stock and the energy resources that they can bring to bear. That is why they are leading on the development of LHEES. As I said, we have looked at a range of models, including direct municipal ownership and joint ventures.

Local authorities will produce their LHEES and provide them to Government. I think that they are all to be provided to the committee as well. They will be made public.

We support people on low incomes to move towards, and benefit from, greener energy through our local area-based schemes and our national warmer homes Scotland service. The new warmer homes Scotland service relaunched earlier this week and aims to reach many more vulnerable households.

We support social landlords and their tenants to benefit from energy efficiency and heating improvements through our social housing net zero heat fund. We support every household in Scotland with free and impartial advice about greener energy use and lower energy bills from our Home Energy Scotland service.

Yes, indeed. We recognise that households in rural and island communities face higher costs and experience some of the highest rates of fuel poverty in Scotland. The targeting and level of support that is available reflects that situation: since last December, we provided an extra £1,500 on top of our £7,500 Home Energy Scotland heating energy efficiency grants, due to the higher costs in rural areas. Fuel-poor households in off-gas areas benefit from higher levels of funding, too, as part of the area-based schemes and warmer homes Scotland service, and our social housing net zero heat fund, which makes £200 million available up to 2026 to support social landlords in that agenda. Rural areas will benefit from an 11 per cent uplift, while remote areas can get 22 per cent more funding.

I visited many social housing providers including, most recently, Argyll Community Housing Association, which has already installed almost 1,400 air-source heat pumps, which covers more than a quarter of its housing stock. A great many of those organisations are leading the way.

The social housing net zero heat fund is available throughout the country and requires organisations to bid. We work very well with social housing providers throughout the country. I am happy to explore those figures, if Mr Briggs wants to write to me about them particularly.

The most important thing is that social housing providers in all parts of the country—urban, rural, east, west, north and south—are already benefiting, and will continue to benefit, from that investment, and we are keen to continue to work with them.

The member knows very well that we will complete work on the climate plan and we will consult on a heat in buildings strategy. When the results of that come out, he will see that it is a hell of a lot more ambitious than the backtracking that we are seeing from the UK Government.

It seems very clear that the Conservative members at Holyrood are firmly behind their Prime Minister watering down and delaying action. Those are the same people who, exactly a year ago, were urging Scotland to copy Liz Truss’s economic policies, which crashed the economy, and they are now urging Scotland to follow Rishi Sunak’s policies, which will do the same to our global life-support system. With a very few exceptions, there are simply no lessons learned, no reflection and no backbone from the Conservatives.

Completely. The language and the anti-environment rhetoric that the UK Government uses is undermining people’s belief that we can move forward on this together.

We also do not control large-scale insulation programmes such as ECO4 and the warm homes discount, which has now been re-badged as the great British insulation scheme. We repeated requests for well over a year for the UK Government to link them more effectively with our schemes. Those requests were not even turned down but were simply ignored.

All of Parliament should support the ambition that we are bringing to this agenda, not just on heat in buildings but on developing our renewables, on record investment in active travel, and on leading the fightback for nature with the nature restoration fund, a five-year delivery plan and a natural environment bill. As Christine Grahame told us, it is time to hit the accelerator and not the brakes.

Mr Sunak spoke about being

“brave in the decisions we make”

and said that people

“wonder why in the face of the facts as they have them, choices are made as they are”.

I am afraid that I do not wonder why he has done this. He has done it to create a new partisan dividing line when our politics needs united determination. He has done it because he sees political opportunity from making climate a new front in his culture war.

Climate week might be an annual event, but, this year, more than ever before, we need to recapture the shared sense of urgency that shaped the first climate change act—the Climate Change Act 2008—and led all political parties to work to strengthen it. Across the political spectrum, there are those who know that we need to act with urgency, and there are others who would prefer to downgrade, delay and dilute climate action. We need to have the courage of our convictions and ensure that the next climate plan not only delivers but recreates that sense of unity.

We have discussed this before, so I know that Sarah Boyack is aware that demand-led grant and loan schemes were vulnerable to low take-up during the past few extraordinary years that we have all been living through. That is one of the reasons why we have committed to consulting on a supplier-led model, which we think might be less vulnerable to that kind of external shock.

It will not come as a surprise to anyone in the chamber that I disagree with the Conservatives and their Prime Minister. It is clear that most of the public do not trust them on the issue either. It is also clear that this is not just about policy differences but about the role of this Parliament. What the UK chooses to do has a significant impact on what we are able to do in Scotland. It could not be otherwise within the limits of the devolution settlement, which is being undermined year on year by the UK Government. When the climate targets were set, of course we did not agree with the UK Government on details of policy delivery—there were reasonable disagreements of that nature—but there was at least some reason to think that the UK would have a hope of a Government that was vaguely rational and that was willing to communicate and co-operate despite our differences.

That need for co-operation was set out clearly by the UKCCC recently in telling all the UK Governments in the UK that we had to try harder to work together, and we agree. However, within days came that wrecking ball through climate policy without a word of communication either with us or with the Welsh Government. Of course, the UK Government has form. This is the same Government that, a few months ago, deliberately sabotaged the deposit return scheme, for which this Parliament voted, by insisting that our scheme had to align with its scheme—a scheme that did not exist and, as is increasingly clear, will never exist under this UK Government—[Interruption.]