Energy Efficient Scotland: equality impact assessment

8. Who will it affect?

8.1. The Programme will be able to provide multiple benefits to all people living in Scotland, including those with protected characteristics, by:

• make our homes and places of work warmer and more efficient in a way which is more affordable, thus helping to tackle fuel poverty and improve the competitiveness of the Scottish economy;
• help create a substantial Scottish market and supply chain for energy efficiency services and technologies. Every £100 million spent on energy efficiency improvements in 2018 is estimated to support approximately 1,200 full time equivalent jobs across the Scottish economy;
• deliver health, wellbeing and early years improvements through warmer homes;
• provide regeneration of communities through upgraded building stock; and
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions thus helping to meet our climate change targets.

8.2. It is anticipated the current and future energy efficiency and fuel poverty schemes under the Programme will help reduce overall fuel poverty to less that 10% by 2040.

8.3. Private Rented Sector: all people living in private rented accommodation, including those with protected characteristics, could be affected by the policy which has the potential to improve their living conditions. Private landlords in Scotland will be affected as they will be required to ensure that any properties they rent to tenants are brought up to the long-term standard of EPC D by 2025 and the long-term standard of EPC C by 2030, where technically feasible and cost effective.

8.4. Social Housing: energy efficiency for social housing has been introduced under the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing ( EESSH). Social landlords are already making good progress towards achieving the first energy efficiency ratings milestone set for 2020, with 75% already meeting the standard (2016/17). The Consultation on EESSH post-2020 ( EESSH2) proposes a new aspirational target requiring most social houses to achieve EPC B by 2032.

8.5. Owner Occupier: all owner-occupied properties will be required to reach EPC C by 2040. There are around 1 million owner occupied properties in Scotland that would need to be improved to meet this standard. Owners will initially be encouraged to improve their properties. However it has been recognised that in order to support the Programme we may require legal provision and are currently considering this.

8.6. Non Domestic: this sector is being considered at a higher level than the residential sector. We consider no detrimental effect on people with protected characteristics at this time. A full consultation of the non-domestic sector will take place in 2019 when a full EQIA will be undertaken.