Question reference: S6W-09270
- Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 23 June 2022
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Current status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 12 July 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to the NESTA report, Estimating the willingness to pay for a heat pump, in determining the level of financial support that it will provide to householders, and the contribution of heat pumps, to meet its target for the rate of zero carbon heating system installations in new and existing homes and buildings to double every year from the current baseline to at least 64,000 installations in 2025.
Answer
Over the course of this parliament, we have committed to investing £1.8 billion into zero emissions heating and energy efficiency across Scotland. This includes the Scottish Government’s Home Energy Scotland Loan and Cashback scheme which currently provides households with up to £17,500 of combined loan and cashback funding for the installation of zero emissions heating systems.
The current Home Energy Scotland loan scheme has been operational and supporting households for some time, with the cashback element introduced in 2020. Through the Heat in Buildings Strategy we have also committed to replacing the cashback element of the scheme with a standalone grant during the course of 2022-23.
In developing the new grant scheme and setting grant levels, we are examining a range of evidence. This consideration will include the recent reports published by Nesta. This report and follow up report ‘how to increase the demand for heat pumps’ published in June 2022 by Nesta raises many informative findings, amongst them that a combination of incentives was found to be the most effective in increasing heat pump uptake, in particular a grant combined with lower running costs of the system.
The Scottish Government aims to make the installation of zero emissions heating systems both desirable and achievable for households across Scotland, and the future development of the Home Energy Scotland Loan and Grant scheme will play a large part in this.