We can only tackle climate change with honesty and collective action

There is very little seriousness about climate change in Scotland and depressingly little honesty. The Climate Change Committee is the most serious body looking at climate change across the UK and its report (covered here) on Scotland today lacks perspective, detail and candour.

Let's start with the headlines. The report says that the "net cost" to Scotland to reach its "Net Zero" targets will be an average of £750 million per year between now and 2050. Except if you divide that total sum by the cost of installing a heat pump you'll discover that that is the bill for decarbonising the heating of no more than two fifths of Scotland's homes.

Yet they inexplicably claim this will get us to 95 per cent zero-carbon heating in houses. They estimate the cost per house of getting to zero carbon of about £14,000. This is about half of existing projections and, if followed through on, would cost much more than £750m a year. Of that total the more time-intensive work of retrofitting insulation and draughtproofing (40 per cent of heating is lost) is virtually uncosted.

It makes some generous assumptions about savings for households too – and yet those savings seemed based on very large hidden costs. While it doesn't state it, this appears to assume a very large financial contribution from households, not least including buying a new electric car. The money saved from these estimates here seems optimistic, to say the least.

The sum total for net zero housing costs is well below half Common Weal's estimates from 2019. These have since been tested in real-world projects and have been shown to be realistic. They also match the scale of investment predicted in many other assessments.

Meanwhile they estimate that the cost of decarbonising transport is actually negative five billion pounds. It literally assumes that spending £5bn less on transport will decarbonise things because savings will greatly outweigh costs. This is predicated on everyone buying a new electric car, those cars being cheaper than the petrol equivalent and the running costs to be lower.

But that explains the problem – if this is to work, the last petrol car in Scotland's history would need to be sold sometime in the next five or six years and after that there would need to be no new petrol vehicles. The charging infrastructure isn't there to support that transition, but the report points out Scotland has seven per cent more charging points per capita. Again, that might seem nice but then you realise we've got 70 per cent more road. Not everyone will buy a brand new car in the next ten years. The capital outlay still needs to come from somewhere.

There is much more that could be questioned about this report, so many assumptions that have been made or not made, so many alternative options which have simply not been considered. If we were being generous, it would seem that they have come up with a range of highly optimistic assumptions for the purpose of trying to persuade the public that this is achievable.

In some ways that might be considered honourable, or necessary even. Unfortunately it also means that big issues aren't being considered here. For example, this continues to assume that this transition will primarily result from individual action on the part of households. The upfront cost to households is not set out here; it is disguised under long term savings and other assumptions.

Secondly, the inefficiency of doing it this way is simply not considered. Common Weal estimates that the simple inefficiency of doing things on this tiny scale, over and over again (house at a time rather than street at a time) will cost in the order of 30 per cent more per household. That could amount to £100,000 in total.

Third, that this investment could be used to transform the Scottish economy is not considered, and nor is the tax gains that could result. The vast majority of this expenditure will go on foreign-made air source heat pumps. That will all be lost to the economy.

All alternative, collectivist solutions have been ignored. That we might create shared heating systems for communities (much more efficient) is not considered or raised. Profiling this work as if it could create real economic development in Scotland is simply ignored. This is a narrow, consumerist version of net zero with some very generous assumptions.

In the end, how spending enough money to install heat pumps in 40 per cent of buildings with no additional investment in insulation and draughtproofing is meant to displace 95 per cent of the gas central heating in Scotland is very hard to fathom from this report. That is its fundamental problem – it is hard to believe.

Scotland won't decarbonise until we take a rational, all-system approach. We must assess not the easiest, cheapest way to pretend to decarbonise. We need to pick the best, most enduring way that brings the widest possible benefit to the people of Scotland. Pretending a lot of Japanese heat pumps is that solution is unrealistic.