Climate Day: Common Sense measures to protect the environment

On Climate Day, Scottish Conservatives are outlining measures to protect the environment.

Jackson Carlaw, Scottish Conservative Climate Change Spokesperson, said:

"The first step to decarbonising our economy and ensuring energy security is reducing our energy consumption. A Scottish Conservative amendment in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 introduced the Green Council Tax discount and we will seek to improve the uptake of this through a public information campaign.

"We will retain Home Energy Reports despite the abolition of Home Reports and consolidate the various energy efficiency schemes into one system, with residential and non-residential schemes.

"We will require Local Authorities to publish heat maps showing where demand is in their local areas, with a view to increasing the take up of district heating, where appropriate. In the public sector, we will require all public bodies to publish details of their energy consumption and commit to a target to reduce it.

"We will also aim for a sensible and sustainable increase in new productive softwoods and promote themed days throughout the year to encourage environmental volunteering, such as beach clean ups.

"It is common sense to protect our environment and Scottish Conservative measures will do just that."

A Green Council Tax scheme operates in England and Wales, where councils and power companies have combined to offer council tax cuts of up to £125 as a one off reduction. This is given as extra help towards the cost of installing home insulation, and is on top of any other subsidised insulation packages.

Scottish Conservatives pushed for amendments to the Climate Change (Scotland) in 2009 Bill to allow Scottish Councils to give the same council tax rebate to households which install energy efficient measures including cavity wall and loft insulation. We also tabled our own amendment to allow these discounts to apply to non-domestic rates. The amendments (67and 132 respectively) were passed unanimously.

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