It’s high time for lower emissions

Dr Richard Dixon looks forward to a new Scottish Government and serious action to make our homes more environmentally friendly

Last week, a group of business leaders published a ten-year plan for Covid recovery in the UK. It is rare I find myself agreeing with the likes of Shell, Tesco, Heathrow and Astrazeneca, but on one point they are spot on – the overriding need to drastically reduce climate emissions eminating from British homes.

The self-styled Covid Recovery Commission proposes a National Deal for Net Zero Homes, with a 15-year path to decarbonising residential properties, including calling on the UK Government to retrofit all social housing by 2030.

To stress the need for urgency, the commission quotes an energy think tank stating that the number of homes currently upgraded every year needs to be the number we upgrade every week if we are to get deliver on climate targets.

As you would expect, the plan is business and market focused, with government mostly just stumping up cash. And the commission hasn’t realised that the Scottish Government control almost all of this north of the Border. But, the group has added a strong business voice to the call to get serious about low-carbon, warm homes.

Heating our homes and the provision of hot water counts for at least 15 per cent of Scotland’s climate emissions. At the same time, many of our homes are so energy inefficient that people live in fuel poverty, struggling to pay utility bills.

We can set high standards for new homes – although they still need to be higher – but 80 per cent of our current housing stock is expected to still be with us in 2050, so we need to upgrade these existing buildings.

In 2001, the Scottish Government committed to ending fuel poverty by 2016. There has been a lot of investment in insulating homes and changing heating systems since, but the last official figures showed a quarter of households in Scotland were in fuel poverty.

Many children are living in homes that are cold and damp, to the detriment of their physical and mental health, and their performance at school.

In 2019 a new target passed into law... ending fuel poverty by 2040.

The spur of improving people’s lives and life chances by making their homes more liveable doesn’t seem to have been enough but, fortunately, the need to reduce the climate emissions all these badly insulated, inefficiently heated homes cause is an extra incentive to act.

Add to that the tremendous job creation potential of a major retrofit programme and insulating people’s homes

Insulating people’s homes is a winner for people, jobs and the environment

suddenly becomes a winner for people, jobs and the environment.

As employment declines in the oil and gas industry, a programme of retrofitting people’s homes will create good quality, technical jobs, helping people move from the high-carbon jobs to low-carbon one. Recent work for the STUC suggests this kind of programme of works could create 60,000 jobs over the next decade.

Whoever you vote for today, the good news is that all the major parties promise lots of action on upgrading homes. The new Scottish Government can take encouragement from the Covid Recovery Commission’s topline message – perhaps ignoring the detail – and make a huge transformation of Scotland’s housing in the next five years.

Dr Richard Dixon is director of Friends of the Earth Scotland