Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 23 February 2021
As a member coming to the bill in its later stages, I thank the committee for its detailed stage 1 report, which made the intricacies of the bill much easier to pick up. I thank the minister and the bill team—this is the team’s first bill and I hope that there will be more to come—for constructively engaging. I also thank stakeholders, including WWF and Scottish Renewables, for their detailed input, which was very helpful in writing amendments
The committee was right to underline that we face an energy quadrilemma of climate, affordability, and the security and acceptability of supply. The latter three would have been big drivers for the Danes when they began their huge development of municipal heat networks in the 1970s. Today’s climate emergency hugely raises the stakes for everyone. With serious question marks over whether hydrogen will be a practical low-carbon replacement for gas, it is right that we build as many resilient low-carbon heat networks as possible today.
The bill is quite a technical one, but more of the regulatory and licensing framework has been fleshed out as it has progressed through Parliament. Having as much of that clarity as possible included in the bill will lead to more certainty, which will lead to heat networks becoming more bankable as investors can more accurately weigh up the risk and the opportunity. However, as Alexander Burnett alluded to, there will still be more detail to come. The bill has gone as far as it can, though, in including that.
I hope that there is enough of an incentive in the bill and the accompanying heat and building strategy to ensure that no low-hanging fruit is missed in the years to come. However, it is infuriating to see in my region, for example, a distillery dumping vast amounts of heat into the sky when its immediate neighbours sit in fuel poverty next to their open coal fires. We cannot miss such opportunities. Heat network zones must spell out the clear win-win opportunities, with costs to be borne if the owners of anchor buildings sit it out on the sidelines and create inertia.
The opportunities are crying out. This building itself has probably gone about as far as it can go in substantially reducing carbon emissions, but the introduction of a heat network for the Canongate would be a game-changer. The future proofing has to start now. We have major housing growth areas that need heat networks built in from day minus one, not day zero. Developers must not be allowed to choose the short-termism of the gas grid, and the Scottish Government has a responsibility to not send mixed messages about the future of fossil gas for heating. I hope that the bill heralds a new chapter in Scotland’s energy story. It builds on the experience and expertise of those who pioneered district heating in Scotland and across Europe. It is time to make another big step change for a greener and fair energy system, which is why the Greens will support the bill at decision time.