Meeting of the Parliament 10 May 2018
I am delighted to have the opportunity to open the debate and to discuss the important issue of energy efficiency. Just a week on from the launch of “Energy Efficient Scotland: Route Map”, which flowed from the “Scottish Energy Strategy” and “Climate Change Plan: The Third Report on Proposals and Policies 2018-2032”, which were published in December 2017 and February 2018 respectively, this is a good time for our Parliament to examine the challenges and opportunities ahead of us in transforming Scotland’s homes and buildings to be warmer, greener and more energy efficient.
Improving the energy efficiency of our homes and buildings lies at the heart of achieving that and will help us, through cross-portfolio working, to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and meet our new all-energy target to deliver 50 per cent of Scotland’s total energy needs from renewable sources by 2030. Crucially, as the Government’s motion sets out, it is essential to invest in energy efficiency if we are to remove poor energy efficiency as a driver of fuel poverty.
By improving the energy efficiency of households that are living in fuel poverty, we are supporting our commitment to address the underlying economic and social inequalities in our society, and we are fundamentally helping to make Scotland a fairer country. Of course, as our climate change plan and energy strategy also make clear, better energy efficiency of our workplaces will help to improve business productivity and competitiveness.
Our latest statistics show that buildings account for almost 20 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, so improving the energy efficiency of all Scotland’s residential and non-domestic buildings crucially underpins our efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and meet our world-leading climate change targets.
Our investment in energy efficiency will stimulate economic growth and support jobs across Scotland. Research suggests that a 10 per cent improvement in the energy efficiency of households will lead to a sustained expansion of gross domestic product of around 0.16 per cent. It is also estimated that every £100 million spent on energy efficiency improvements in 2018 would support approximately 1,200 jobs. That is why, in 2015, we designated energy efficiency a national infrastructure priority, and the route map sets out that the whole-economy cost of the programme for the public, private and third sectors will be between £10 billion and £12 billion in today’s values.