Energy Efficient Scotland: the future of low carbon heat for off gas buildings - call for evidence

Growing and Scaling the Supply Chain

There are potentially significant economic opportunities for local businesses and the supply chain as we decarbonise the supply of heat in Scotland. The Scottish Government wants to ensure that decarbonising heat is done in a way that supports Scotland's wider socio-economic objectives and helps to develop the Scottish supply chain.

The scale and ambition, even when only focussed in areas not currently using mains gas for heating, is significant and presents both opportunities and challenges for the supply chain to scale up to meet the level of demand. Our existing energy efficiency and low carbon heat schemes have shown that there are potential opportunities to realise economies of scale and to develop and engage local supply chains.

It will be important to ensure that delivery agents are trusted and that we continue to learn lessons from past delivery schemes here in Scotland, but also across the wider UK. Work is on-going to develop a quality assurance framework for Energy Efficient Scotland and there is scope to extend this to cover the supply of low carbon heat measures in off gas buildings.

We are interested in understanding how to phase policies to ensure that the Scottish supply chain is able to respond adequately to the increased demand. We are also interested in understanding what gaps currently exists in the Scottish skills base and supply chain and in how best to engage SMEs and develop local supply chains across Scotland.

Questions

57. What actions should we undertake to ensure the Scottish supply chain has the skills and capacity to capitalise on the future increase in demand for the installation of low carbon heat?