No home left behind: Funding a just transition to clean heat in Scotland

Article

How can we ensure that investment in clean heating in Scottish homes drives a just transition, sharing costs and benefits fairly?

Retrofitting all homes by 2045 needs a massive acceleration in the number of households upgrading their energy efficiency and installing clean heating systems. The pace of change must grow dramatically, from fewer than 10,000 homes per year at present to well over 100,000 each year to 2045.

Achieving that acceleration is a complex policy challenge cutting across planning, delivery, supply chains and more. In this paper we focus on one critical issue: how the cost of retrofit should be covered. We model different policy approaches, testing them against several dimensions of fairness.

We find the fairest way to deliver investment as retrofit moves from niche to mainstream is to share a high proportion of costs via the public finances.

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