Meeting of the Parliament 10 May 2018
I very much welcome that comment. We clearly wish to think carefully about the labour market impacts of such a major investment programme. My colleague Jamie Hepburn, as the minister responsible for skills and training, will be examining that issue closely on our behalf.
There are tremendous Scotland-based supply-chain opportunities, which we are determined to develop and support in partnership with Scotland’s energy and construction sectors. Our commitment to improving the energy efficiency of Scotland’s homes and buildings is not new. By the end of 2021 we will have allocated more than £1 billion since 2009 to tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency. In addition, we have invested more than £85 million since 2007 in loans to support Scottish households, businesses and organisations with energy efficiency and renewables measures, and in the development of district heating schemes, supporting more than 5,200 applicants in total so far.
Our energy efficiency loans to businesses alone have generated energy savings of 339 gigawatt hours since 2008, with carbon savings of 130 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and financial savings of £36 million.
We introduced regulations for the assessment and improvement of larger non-domestic buildings in 2016. Although they will have limited impact on our overall stock, they provide a solid basis from which we will extend regulation across the sector, as set out in our route map. Our non-domestic energy efficiency framework and support unit are catalysing energy efficiency retrofit throughout Scotland’s public sector, with a strong project pipeline in place.
That activity, working in partnership with local government and energy companies, has helped to deliver more than 1 million measures to more than 1 million households since 2008. That is reflected in the energy efficiency profile of the housing stock, with 42 per cent of homes in Scotland at energy performance certificate band C or better in 2016, which was an increase from 24 per cent in 2010.
This year, we have allocated more than £146 million to improving the energy efficiency of Scotland’s building stock, which is a real-terms budget increase. We remain on track to deliver the 2016 programme for government commitment to make £0.5 billion available to tackle fuel poverty and boost energy efficiency over the four years to 2021. We want to continue to improve on that record and tackle the more than 1 million homes that do not yet have a good energy efficiency rating, which means C or better.
For our non-domestic building stock, given its diversity in scale, age and specification, work is on-going to understand and benchmark the energy and emissions performance across Scotland and how that can best be improved.