The Scottish government is to scrap flagship plans to make homeowners switch to greener heating soon after buying a new home.
The acting net-zero secretary Gillian Martin told MSPs that the draft Heat in Buildings Bill would no longer be put forward in its current form.
She said the legislation – drafted by the Scottish Greens as part of the Bute House Agreement – would “make people poorer.”
But Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie, who drafted the bill, said the decision “flies in the face of the climate ambitions that this government is supposed to have”.
Ms Martin said she would introduce a bill only when she could be satisfied it would both decarbonise houses and decrease fuel poverty.
Heating homes, largely through gas boilers, is responsible for about 18.5% of Scotland’s planet warming greenhouse gas emissions.
The legislation would have required them to be replaced with alternatives, such as electric heat pumps, within a set time frame after the sale of a property.
But Martin said: “I’m going to introduce a Heat in Buildings Bill when I can be satisfied that those interventions within it will decrease fuel poverty at the same time as decarbonising houses.”
The minister said she felt the drafting of the bill didn’t take that “significantly into consideration” and added there were “so many moving parts”.
Martin said: “I am going to craft a bill that is going to simultaneously reduce carbon and tackle fuel poverty.
“And until I can do that I’m afraid there will not be a bill put forward in its current drafted form because at the moment it will make people poorer.”
‘Condemning the poorest’
Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie, who drafted the bill, said the decision “flies in the face of the climate ambitions that this government is supposed to have”.
He added: “This is yet another example of the SNP’s climate delays, which have grown more and more worrying over the last year.
“It will also delay the huge benefit households need to see from ending their reliance on fossil fuels and their volatile prices.”
WWF Scotland also criticised the move and questioned the logic behind it.
Io Hadjicosta, the charity’s climate and energy policy manager, said: “This announcement is deeply concerning and is yet another case of the Scottish government flip flopping when it comes to tackling the climate emergency.
“Reducing emissions from Scotland’s housing stock by improving insulation and fitting renewable heat pumps would lift people out of fuel poverty – not increase it.
“By delaying the introduction of the Heat in Buildings Bill further all the government is doing is condemning the poorest in our society to increasingly high fossil fuel costs and damp, unhealthy homes.”
Last April the Scottish government confirmed it would scrap its annual and interim targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
It said they would be replaced with a system measuring emissions every five years.
In a statement to the Scottish parliament, Energy Secretary Mairi McAllan accepted that the target of cutting emissions by 75% by 2030 was out of reach.
But she told MSPs the government must act to chart a course reach net zero by 2045 at a pace and scale which was feasible, fair and just.
The Heat in Buildings Bill was once described to me as “game changing” legislation designed to reduce the massive carbon footprint that comes from heating our homes.
Our gas boilers are the main culprit; lots of individual devices inefficiently burning fossil fuels to create the heat.
At least a million of them needed to be replaced by 2030 to meet the Scottish government’s now abandoned interim climate change targets.
The legislation would have meant anyone buying a home would have had to change to a green heating system – like a heat pump – within, say, two years of the sale being completed. The exact time frame had not been decided.
But with the 2030 target now scrapped, and a much delayed energy strategy still not forthcoming, the pressure is off.
Although the plan could be revived in the future it is pretty clear, from the tone of the ministerial statement, that something major would have to change for that to happen.
