PATRICK Harvie, who has his own extreme agenda as co-leader of the Greens in Scotland, a party of around 7500 members, is the last person who should hold the zero-carbon buildings brief on behalf of us all! He has obviously a huge conflict of interest to declare putting his party before all of us to push his own personal agenda on the whole of Scotland’s population.
His Heat in Buildings Bill is a crazy scheme and should be ditched before he wreaks havoc on us all.
The Scottish Government has ambitious targets to de-carbonise our buildings. He says these targets are in law and agreed by all parties in parliament. It is most important that we the public are made aware of just what the Scottish Government are planning, as once again a Green policy is surely not going to be at all popular once the public find out what they are expected to do. Most people have no idea at present time what is in the policies.
READ MORE: Leading authority on heat pumps backs Scottish Government's plans
According to some study conducted on behalf of WWF Scotland, without knowing any of the actual facts/details, 65% support the phasing out of fossil fuel boilers by the Scottish Government enforcing new rules for better insulation in existing homes. The Scottish Government is to launch a consultation on these policies this summer! About time, as the public have generally no idea what is going on and about to be forced on them.
This Heat in Buildings Bill will include these policies. Harvie is, among other things, trying to revamp Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings which will see those with fossil-fuel boilers downgraded compared to those with climate-friendly systems, ie heat pumps, thereby penalising householders if they do not go all-electric and you won’t be able to sell your house if its not all-electric as you will have a lower EPC rating. Just why is he, with his huge conflict of interest, in a position to do this in the first place?
READ MORE: Anas Sarwar told to urgently clarify Labour's position on heat pumps
He states that the most generous of grants of any of the UK nations of up to £7500 for both heat and energy efficiency will be available. When do the public realise just how far a grant of £7500 goes towards changing people’s heating systems and insulation costs? All of Scotland’s housing stock, apart from new-builds less than 20 years old, was built in an age far removed from being all-electric, which was never a realistic consideration to anybody due to the cost of running it to keep you warm.
He says to instal heat pumps, which are fine in new builds where you can use underfloor heating, BUT not so good if you have radiators instead, as the heat pumps do not generate enough heat to warm up a radiator hot enough like a oil/gas boiler does to keep your house warm.
His crazy scheme and Bill should be ditched. Scotland is already doing more than most in trying to save our planet, so do not feel as if you have to do this. We should not be going back to whole families sitting round two bars of a electric fire to get warm, surely.
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If it’s so much of an emergency then our Scottish Government should pay for ALL the costs of converting our houses to all-electric systems, like insulation, electric wiring, heat pumps rated for each house, enough electric heaters to keep each room warm, immersion heaters for hot water supply as per house needs, redecoration, to name a few, and as we are currently charged extortionate rates for our electricity from the National Grid suppliers we should get free electricity to run it all paid by the government.
Surely we Scots are not going to become the first country to go all-electric, and worse still Harvie expects we householders pay for it!
Michael Maclennan
Brora
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