Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 May 2022
As colleagues have said, it is incredible to note what is already happening in our islands. The Scottish Government recently supported Foula Wool with £146,000 from the island communities fund, which is aimed at supporting green projects. Foula is an island that has already done incredible things, and many of the examples relate to the Foula Electricity Trust. The island has produced its own energy since FET was established in 1982, and efforts to decarbonise the system are on-going, with collaborative approaches involving other Scottish islands, and knowledge and experience being shared by others across the EU and the world.
Rum, Muck, Canna, Fair Isle and Eigg, which my colleague Rhoda Grant went into in more detail, are all ground breaking in their efforts to become self-sufficient with community-run and increasingly green energy developments—so much so that they, alongside the Knoydart peninsula, have been assigned the status of pioneering islands in the clean energy for EU islands programme.
With all those strong foundations in place, it makes sense for the Scottish Government to support six other islands to become carbon neutral. As an MSP who represents five of the six islands that have been identified for support, I am very glad to hear that the cabinet secretary will soon meet those who are already making headway on the islands to make sure that efforts are made with the community rather than things happening to it.
There are undeniably extra challenges involved in living in an island community. We know that transport and buildings are the highest emitters of CO2 equivalent overall, and both are more of a pressure in the islands. Ferries and planes are a fact of life. They are things that people need to survive, not nice alternative options that people could choose to give up if they wanted, like take-away coffee cups or bottled soap. Many homes are now old and they do not have the fabric to allow for things such as turning down the heating or swapping to a new system.
In Orkney, which has always been at the forefront of renewable energy efforts, many homes relied on peat for heat well into the 20th century. So many buildings in the islands are still not compatible with air-source heat pumps or other greener heating systems. It is important to look at that in the context of fuel poverty, which is at its highest in the UK in parts of my region, including the northern isles and Caithness and Sutherland.
It is vital that, when we talk about doing away with oil boilers, we think about the impact of that on people who already had energy bills that were impossible to budget for before the cost of living crisis and the looming need to swap to a new, and likely more expensive, heating system. We have to think about the astronomical personal costs, regardless of any grants for installation, that people face in paying for extremely high power consumption to heat badly insulated houses with green energy.
I was therefore glad to see in my Orkney colleague Liam McArthur’s amendment a line that draws attention to the need to consider not just encouraging retrofitting but actively funding it. That is necessary, and it is important that that aspect was brought to the debate. We cannot push people who are experiencing the highest levels of fuel poverty in the UK further into that desperate situation. Bans on oil boilers have to come immediately alongside the possibility of being able to heat homes in a green way. We are not there yet, and social housing providers in the isles are feeling the pressure, particularly considering the higher costs of building materials.
I am also glad to hear that the Scottish Government is open to considering how to support more sustainable tourism in the islands, as part of that carbon neutral journey. The Highlands and Islands region has relied heavily on tourism, but Covid restrictions, rising house prices and the struggles of local councils to keep up with extra demands on roads and other services have demonstrated a need to diversify and have perhaps opened more eyes to the concept and drawbacks of overtourism. People will always want to come and enjoy our landscapes, offerings and culture, but all those things are at risk of disappearing if locals, whether they were born and raised in the region or have chosen to make it their home—by which I mean a permanent, not a second, home—are driven out and replaced with houses that lie empty for most of the year, being visited by tourists who have not been given the knowledge that they need to make sure that they do not damage the area as they travel through it.
If our health, care and social workers cannot find housing, life in the Highlands and Islands becomes not only difficult but doubtful. Even putting that aside, if hospitality workers cannot find a home, tourists are not going to have much fun.
I will now go back to the positives of the debate, because we are debating something that is genuinely very positive if we get it right. If we get it right, we can secure the future of our islands as fantastic, sustainable and affordable places in which to live and work.
Scotland has to decarbonise and we have to work towards net zero. It is right that we focus not only on what will bring the biggest and most impressive stats all at once, but on the places in which investment is required as soon as possible, to help people who are struggling, and to avoid plunging more of them into fuel poverty. A greener country cannot just mean flashy national statistics. It has to mean that those people who are living in difficult-to-heat homes surrounded by turbines and hydro schemes can afford to heat their home in winter without starving, and that people in our islands are able to travel to work and still lead sustainable lives. It is clear that those efforts to put our islands at the forefront of our journey to net zero are good for tackling not only climate change but some of the real issues that need to be tackled in our island communities: fuel poverty, housing and transport.
It is incredibly important that the development of those plans is based on the voices of those who live there. Islanders told the Scottish Government that they wanted action to support them to become more sustainable; the Scottish Government will deliver on that big ask.
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