S4M-09239 District Heating and Decarbonising Heating

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Elaine Smith): Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is a debate on motion S4M-09239, in the name of Fergus Ewing, on maximising the opportunities for Scotland from district heating and decarbonising the heat system.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP): I have lived in Scotland all my life. I suppose I take heat for granted now, but when I was a youngster I was brought up in a very large, draughty, old Victorian house with no central heating. We woke up in the morning to ice on the inside of the window and slept under eight blankets, not because we could not afford heating but because the technology just was not there. So, in one sense, we were lucky.

However, all over Scotland, citizens are struggling with fuel poverty. Indeed, even in an area of relative success and substantial wealth compared with the rest of Scotland—Aberdeen—a survey has suggested that up to 70 per cent of residents might struggle to afford the heat that they need. If that is the case in Aberdeen, how much worse is it likely to be elsewhere? The cost of heating is substantial. It has been suggested that it might be around £2.6 billion a year in Scotland for heating and cooling. So, the economics as well as the climate impacts are quite substantial.

Of course, we exist here at all because of energy. At the very beginning of the universe, before the big bang happened, there was nothing but energy. There was no clock, because there was no mass; but when energy started to convert into mass, the clock started. So, from energy we have sprung. A sustained change from energy to mass is what has caused our expanding universe to be present. Probably it required that energy to behave in a coherent way. I make that point in reference to the way in which lasers work.

Similarly, in today’s debate, we need coherence, which I think we have heard from all parts of the chamber.

In context terms, we are talking about climate change. Recent weather events have probably started to persuade even the most reluctant accepters of climate change, who know little and understand less of scientific method and knowledge, that there is actually a problem to be solved. We have seen flooding wrecking people’s lives, mostly in England but in Scotland as well; we have seen a harsh winter on the east coast of the United States that has killed older and vulnerable people; and only this week we have seen it reported that a 30,000-year-old virus has been brought back to life as the permafrost in the tundra areas of Siberia has receded, allowing it to be rediscovered. There may be a biological time bomb just waiting to wipe us out, perhaps overnight.

Climate change is a substantial problem. Because heat represents half of our energy use, decarbonising it is an important part of how we can help the world to deal with the problem. However, we have to up the ante, and the consultation that the minister has published this week is a substantial contribution to that. Our power industry has dramatically reduced its emissions, but because it is part of the European emissions trading scheme, that is barely reflected in the actual numbers that we use to count our climate change emissions. However, that is no excuse for not doing it—it is a good thing to do.

As we have heard from a number of members—and it is rather obvious—heat does not travel great distances very effectively. It is a bulky thing to carry. Water is usually the medium, and a cubic metre of water weighs a tonne, so we can see why moving it can be expensive.

We have a variety of different ways to deal with heat. By way of a side reference, I am extremely glad that at Peterhead in my constituency we are now seeing the carbon capture project moving ahead, which will help. It would be awfie nice if we could find some way of getting the heat out of the power station to heat most of Peterhead as well, so we will keep an eye on that.

There was reference by Colin Beattie to what goes on in Iceland. I was slightly surprised that he did not develop that a little further. At Hveragerdi, which is the main volcanic region, something happens that has not been touched on in this debate, which is that the thermal energy that comes out of the ground is used to grow crops in greenhouses. We have not heard anything in this debate so far about how we might exploit our heat sources to support agriculture. When we go into supermarkets at this time of year, we see strawberries from Morocco, Mexico or Egypt. It would be awfie nice if they could come from Aberdeenshire, where we have thermal energy embedded in the granite. If we could just bring it up, we could grow our own. It is the high-value elements of food that it might be useful to produce in that way. Agriculture is the third biggest cause of climate change emissions, so if we can use heat to address some of the issues, that is likely to be a good thing.

When I visited Iceland 40 years ago, the road into Reykjavik from Hveragerdi was a big pipe that carried hot water. It kept ice off the road and heated the whole of Reykjavik, and then the warm water was discharged into the sea at Reykjavik, where people had year-round swimming in warm water. That was a truly integrated approach to heat. Question 16 in the consultation, which asks for

“further evidence on thermal storage”,

might be a useful way of going into such things.

The bottom line is that this work is urgent and necessary, and the consultation paper is welcome. I hope that recent events convince the declining number of people who do not see climate change as a priority that it is something with which we must engage. We are engaged with it here, and we are basically united on it. Let us now go forward and do what is necessary.

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