Scotland must put more of its energy into renewables

Creating generation at home will help to cut fuel bills, says Sarah Boyack.

LAST week saw the launch of the UK Government's Renewable Energy Strategy – with the aim of 15 per cent of our electricity coming from renewables by 2020.

In our first eight years in the Scottish Parliament, we managed to achieve our target of 20 per cent early. It was a major achievement.

There is a wide degree of consensus that we should now be pushing for 50 per cent of our electricity from renewables by 2020. However, Scotland is falling behind the rest of the UK in our slow progress on microgeneration for households.

It's an exciting agenda – with the potential to deliver secure, local green energy.

With domestic fuel prices continuing to rise, we need to help people make their houses more energy-efficient and to produce their own heat and electricity. We also need to reduce our CO2 emissions to tackle climate change, so there is a win-win here if we act.

There are success stories in Scotland. I've visited several projects in Edinburgh where the city council, local housing associations and householders have installed microgeneration devices. People are now experiencing lower bills – all year round.

People get excited by installing renewables – but we also need to tackle homes and buildings that are badly insulated. There has been progress. But I'd like to go even further and require every new house to benefit from renewables.

It's important, though, that we don't just focus on new housing. 80 per cent of the buildings that will be standing in 2050 have already been built.

The Community Household Renewables Initiative has been very successful in testing the technologies and giving householders grants to install them, but research shows it is not until we have tax breaks that we will see a mass market created.

That's why I'm continuing to campaign for the Scottish Government to support my Members Bill proposing that people putting in insulation or installing microgeneration are given a one-off rebate on their council tax. We're still waiting for the new SNP Government to deliver on cutting the red tape for individual householders who want to get on and install microgeneration.

It took a year for draft guidelines to appear, but they only give the green light to mini wind and heat pumps when houses are 100 metres apart, and the rules on solar panels are out of step with the most efficient products on the market.

Ministers have been lobbied by environmental campaigners and the renewables industry. In a recent debate, the Planning Minister recently told me that he was thinking of changing his approach. But we need to get a move on.

• Sarah Boyack is a former Scottish Environment Minister and MSP for Edinburgh Central