2. To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to introduce financial incentives to encourage households to install low-carbon heating in their homes, to help reach net zero by 2045. (S6O-02181)

We have allocated £1.8 billion for heat and energy efficiency improvements, including an existing package of grants and interest-free loans, which has recently been made more generous and flexible. The green heat finance task force’s forthcoming interim report, exploring options for scaling up existing financial products, will help to shape our policy for encouraging low-carbon heating investment from the second half of the decade. Decarbonising Scotland’s buildings will require a mix of public and private finance. It will sit within a wider package of measures, including regulation to provide market certainty, develop supplier and skills capacity and enhance information provision.

As the minister will be aware, the Scottish Government’s consultation on its draft energy strategy and just transition plan closes a week today. A response this week from the Just Transition Partnership sets out just how inadequate the plans are in their current form, in that they barely exist at all. The Just Transition Partnership has stated that

“Home Energy Efficiency appears peripheral rather than central to this strategy.” and that

“Engagement with drafting the strategy has been poor.”

I note the minister’s answer. Given that the average cost for the installation of an air source heat pump is between £7,000 and £14,000 and that ground source pumps are far more expensive, will the minister give some detail about where grants are going and who is benefiting from them? Are there targets for the number of installations the Government hopes to reach each year?

There may be some differences in expectation here. We have always been clear that the detail of our heat in buildings programme, which has already been consulted on at a high level, will be subject to a detailed consultation that we will publish this spring. The detail of our heat in buildings regulations, and of the large amount of support that we are providing to households and organisations to help them decarbonise their buildings, will be included there.

I hope that Labour colleagues, and others who are urging us to go further, will welcome the ambitious programme that we are setting out. For example, £7,500 per household for heat pump installation, with an additional uplift for those living in rural areas, is a substantially higher level of support than any that exists elsewhere in the United Kingdom. In addition to that, there are grant and loan schemes for energy efficiency.

That package, taken along with our investment in supply chains to ensure that the cost of insulation will reduce over time, means that we are balancing an ambitious package of regulations with a generous package of support to ensure that the heat transition works for everyone.