Heat in Buildings: progress report 2023

Public awareness

We must bring people, businesses and communities across Scotland with us as we decarbonise our homes and buildings. As we said in last year’s progress report, we will publish our Public Engagement Strategy this year.

The strategy will introduce a framework with three key principles for engagement:

• promoting a shared understanding of the heat transition, including how to access support
• public participation in policy and delivery design to ensure acceleration of the heat transition is done in a just and fair way
• facilitating action through improving the consumer journey and normalising the change required across society

Since last year’s progress report, we have been working to develop the strategy, including through a Call for Evidence from December 2022 to February 2023 involving 59 organisations, including industry (installers, manufacturers, energy suppliers), local authorities, housing associations, NGOs, wider third sector, advice service providers and researchers. Based on these discussions we identified three key themes for our approach to public engagement: amplification, collaboration and coordination. The collated insights from recent research we have commissioned are informing the upcoming engagement strategy.

In the past year we have also run two marketing campaigns. In Winter 2022-23, we ran a campaign targeted at those in or at risk of fuel poverty, to increase awareness of the support available through Home Energy Scotland. In March 2023, we ran a marketing campaign to promote our newly launched Home Energy Scotland Grant and Loan scheme. After the marketing campaign, applications saw a 23% increase that month compared to the previous month.

Through both the Home Energy Scotland and Business Energy Scotland services, we continue to fund outreach activities including workshops delivered to community groups and employees to increase knowledge about how they can reduce their carbon footprint in our homes and buildings.

Home Energy Scotland provided over 2,800 local affordable warmth outreach initiatives during the 2022-23 financial year, as well as basic energy advice support and training to over 200 voluntary sector and community groups. Our Home Energy Scotland advice service also helped to support over 138,000 unique households, with over 71,000 of those vulnerable to fuel poverty. So far this financial year (as of September), we have supported over 44,000 households, with over 23,000 of those vulnerable to fuel poverty.

We are planning further national marketing activity from January to March 202, to encourage households to contact HES to discuss funding options for installing a heat pump.

Business Energy Scotland received over 9,000 enquiries from SMEs in Scotland and completed over 1,000 energy assessment reports during 2022-23. It also identified £10.1 million in savings across 365 applications