Heat In Buildings Bill Shelved

As the Scottish Government's clean heating Bill is scrapped, how do we get clean heating to Scotland's homes?

The Scottish Government has announced that its pausing the Heat in Buildings Bill indefinitely until "it would both decarbonise houses and decrease fuel poverty".

The Bill was drafted by the Scottish Greens during the term of the Bute House Agreement and its loss represents another severing of ties between the parties since the agreement’s end.

However, the Bill was never fit for purpose and effectively dumped the cost of crucial climate retrofits onto homeowners who couldn’t afford it and faced additional costs over and above what it would have cost if the retrofits had been done as a programme of public works paid for by the Government.

In 2023, Common Weal published The Secret Bill which showed that homeowners faced additional costs of almost £10,000 per household due to the inefficiencies of completing these retrofits on an individual and ad hoc basis.

Instead, the Scottish Government should be funded retrofits on a street-by-street basis which allows for economies of scale and for the deployment of technologies like district heating which can provide heat more efficiently and effectively than individual electric heat pumps.

Every winter that the Scottish Government delays these retrofits means another winter of Scottish people suffering from fuel poverty and cold homes. The now-shelved Heat in Buildings Bill was not fit for purpose and would not have done enough to solve this problem but the onus is now on the Scottish Government to bring in more appropriate legislation without further delay.

Further Reading

Robin McAlpine - “Heat pumps are not the answer. We must turn to district heating”

Craig Dalzell - “Scotland's green transition will be more expensive than it has to be”