No legal requirement to update heating systems in new bill
The Scottish government has announced a revised plan to decarbonise Scotland's heating systems by 2045.Acting Net Zero Secretary Gillian Martin scrapped the previous plan last month, saying it would "make people poorer".The revised Heat in Buildings Bill sets targets for decarbonisation but it stops short of legally requiring homeowners and businesses to replace their heating systems by 2045, as outlined in the previous version.Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie, who drafted the previous bill, warned that the government was "watering down" the legislation and and "stripping away almost all of its serious policy measures".
Acting Climate Action Minister Alasdair Allan said the Scottish government would bring forward the revised bill for consideration by the Scottish Parliament later in 2025.
The production of heat accounts for more than half of Scotland's energy demands and is the largest contributor to the country's carbon emissions.MSPs have already passed legislation committing the country to achieving net-zero emissions by 2045.Proposals drawn up while the Scottish Greens were still in the government would have required property owners to switch from "polluting" heating systems, such as gas boilers, to more environmentally-friendly alternatives like heat pumps.Mr Allan said the 2045 target sends a "strong signal to homeowners, landlords and other building owners on the need to prepare for change".However, he accepted the upfront costs customers have to pay for "clean heating systems remain higher than those for fossil fuel systems".He told MSPs at Holyrood that the new approach "moves away from penalising individuals and instead commits to collective action".Mr Allan added: "Instead of placing prohibitions on every homeowner, we will establish targets for government to reach."
Harvie - who recently announced plans to step down as co-leader of the Scottish Greens - said his original legislation was being "gutted" and warned that the government's new approach was "very clearly going to fail".He added: "If there is one thing that we have learned about climate policy in recent years, it is that setting targets without decisive action to meet them is meaningless."He also claimed that not including a "property purchase trigger" - which would have required people buying a home to commit to changing the heating system to a greener alternative within a fixed time period - would mean a "dramatically slower uptake of clean heating in Scotland".
'No clarity on costs'
Labour also raised concerns, with Paul O'Kane highlighting how the Scottish government had abandoned its target of cutting emissions by 75% by 2030.He said: "Given the government has failed to deliver on their climate change targets, and literally broke their own legislation on it, how can the people and industries of Scotland have faith that they will deliver and meet heat in building targets?"Conservative housing spokesperson Meghan Gallacher said the "rehashed bill still provides no clarity on the costs to the public".She said: "Rather than continually setting net-zero targets that they fail to meet, the SNP must finally outline a fair and affordable transition for hard-pressed, over-taxed Scots."Charities have warned that the legislation "risks being a toothless bill".Io Hadjicosta, from WWF Scotland, said Scots were seeing "yet more targets without meaningful measures to provide certainty to industry or to reduce emissions".Lewis Ryder-Jones, from Oxfam Scotland, said: "Weakening Scotland's clean-heat plans risks leaving people to struggle with sky-high bills and cold, draughty homes while pouring cold water on the transition to a greener Scotland that works for everyone."
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The Herald Scotland
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- The Herald Scotland
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The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Glasgow £7.7bn smaller under SNP, says Darren Jones
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The National
an hour ago
- The National
We need to look at where our money goes and why we get so little back
Lately, I've found myself coming back to that question again and again. It's the title of a book published last month in France – Où sont passés nos milliards – by Lucie Castets, a high-ranking civil servant and co-founder of the public sector collective Nos Services Publics (Our Public Services). Castets is one of the sharpest voices on the French left today. She's not an activist or a party leader. The 38-year-old is a technocrat who has worked inside the system and who believes that public money must serve the public good – not just in theory, but in practice. She came to prominence in the summer of 2024, during France's snap parliamentary elections. As the left regrouped under the banner of the Nouveau Front Populaire – a broad coalition uniting Greens, Socialists, Communists and La France Insoumise – Castets was floated as a possible compromise candidate for prime minister. Her name stood out precisely because she wasn't from a party machine. 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As Paul Davies, the firm's managing director, bluntly put it: 'The stark reality is that current UK policy does not allow for the incentivisation or reward of local content, job retention and creation, nor does it encourage any domestic economic benefit.' This is precisely what Castets calls out. Her book is a powerful takedown of the idea that 'the coffers are empty'. In fact, as she shows, public budgets in France have remained stable in volume. What has changed is how the money is spent. The share of GDP allocated to public services like health, education and justice has stagnated or declined. Meanwhile, public support to businesses – via tax credits, subsidies and exemptions – has ballooned, doubling from 3.1% of GDP in 1979 to 6.2% today. That's roughly €185 billion a year. She shows that many of these schemes – such as the CICE (a tax credit for competitiveness and employment) and R&D tax credits – are not only ineffective but regressive. 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She argues that the debate on public spending is rigged: we are told constantly that there is no money for services, while few challenge the enormous – and often ineffective – flow of public money into private hands. As she puts it: 'Today, the state acts as a crutch for a capitalism that has failed to organise either the fair distribution of wealth or the ecological transition. The world of tomorrow must be one in which the state plays a strategic role. We need to give the state back the means to think long term.' Scotland urgently needs this conversation. Because here, too, we are presented with a false dichotomy: either we nationalise everything, or we let the market sort it out. In practice, we end up doing neither – or worse, we let public money prop up failing market logic without any of the promised social returns. We try to make the market work better, rather than asking whether certain needs should even be left to the market in the first place. The result is what we're seeing now: a public that's being asked to foot the bill for a 'green transition' that too often looks like corporate welfare. A political class that wants credit for good intentions, but avoids hard questions about power, ownership and control. And workers – from Falkirk to Grangemouth – who are once again being told their jobs are collateral damage in someone else's strategy. But there is another way. Lucie Castets and others have laid the groundwork for a renewed economic vision in which public investment is not just reactive, but purposeful. In which the state acts not as a backstop for broken markets, but as a co-creator of public value. This vision is already being articulated on parts of the French left – by figures like united left MP Clémentine Autain and Socialist MP Boris Vallaud – and it resonates far beyond France. It should resonate here, too. A genuinely progressive government in Scotland – whether devolved or independent – cannot be content with managing decline. It must be willing to ask: Who controls investment? Who benefits from public money? And what do we demand in return? READ MORE: Majority of Stagecoach drivers to return to work tomorrow ahead of pay vote Alexander Dennis should be a wake-up call. Not just about industrial policy, but about democracy. If public money is always on the table, then the public must be on the board. We need mechanisms that link funding to long-term commitments: not just on jobs, but on supply chains, training and ownership. We need procurement and subsidy rules with teeth – rules that reward domestic value creation, not just technical compliance. And above all, we need the political courage to say that good intentions are not enough. Scotland deserves an industrial policy that matches its ambitions. That means moving beyond the comfort zone of managing market failure and towards a strategic, democratic economy. And maybe the best place to start is with Castets's question: where have our billions gone? Because if we can't answer that, how can we know what to build next?
