SNP axes controversial heat pumps plan

Telegraph

12-03-2025

SNP ministers have scrapped controversial net zero plans to impose heat pumps on new homeowners.
The Scottish Government planned to force those buying a property to rip out their gas boilers and install heat pumps within as little as two years.
People would be given a 'grace period' of between two and five years to replace their gas boilers with a green heating system, such as an expensive heat pump.
But Gillian Martin, the acting net zero secretary, announced that the plan had been removed from the Government's Heat In Buildings Bill and it was redrafting the proposals to help cut people's energy bills. She claimed this had not been taken 'significantly into consideration' when the original version was drafted.
The Scottish Government has previously admitted that the average cost of installing a heat pump is about £10,000. This is about four times the £2,500 cost of replacing a fossil fuel boiler.
Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Greens co-leader who drew up the law when his party was in government with the SNP, lashed out at Ms Martin's announcement, saying it 'flies in the face of the climate ambitions that this Government is supposed to have'.
But his original plan appeared to land householders with the overwhelming bulk of the estimated £33 billion cost of decarbonising Scotland's buildings.
Ms Martin told MSPs: 'I'm going to be upfront with people. I'm going to introduce a Heat in Buildings Bill when I can be satisfied those interventions in it will decrease fuel poverty at the same time as decarbonising houses.
'At the moment I do not feel that the drafting that was done, with the greatest respect to Patrick Harvie, takes that significantly into consideration.
'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 am afraid there will not be a Bill put forward.'
Douglas Lumsden, the Scottish Conservatives ' shadow net zero and energy secretary, said the original plans were 'completely unrealistic'.
'We repeatedly warned nationalist ministers that they would hammer hard-pressed Scots with huge costs but until now they have ploughed ahead regardless,' he said.
'Gillian Martin must now go back to the drawing board and work up proposals that are fair to taxpayers and guarantee their concerns will be listened to.'
The Scottish Chambers of Commerce pointed out the plan would also have applied to business premises and welcomed it being axed, saying it 'demonstrated an incomplete understanding of the Scottish property market'.
Bill 'missing without explanation'
A Scottish government consultation published in November 2023 said people buying property should be forced to comply with a 'prohibition on polluting heating' so that Scotland could reach its 'interim targets' for reducing emissions by 2030.
They would have to make the switch to green forms of heating, such as heat pumps, within a 'specified amount of time' following their purchase.
The main consultation document said ministers 'think between two and five years is likely to be appropriate' but other assessments published alongside it said 'likely two years'.
Legislation was originally scheduled to be introduced at Holyrood in November last year but that failed to happen, prompting Mr Harvie to claim that the Bill was 'missing without explanation'.
Responding to Ms Martin's announcement, he said: '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.'
Doug Smith, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce's vice-president, said: 'Had it been introduced in its draft form, investors, owners and occupiers (and even lenders) could have had great difficulty in delivering its requirements and in some cases would have potentially found it legally or physically impossible to do so.'