The Common Home Plan pulled together lots of our previous research, and other campaigners, activists, and researchers.
If you want to share particular pieces of policy with your MSP, MP or Cllr, without them having to go through the whole #GreenNewDeal, then take a look below 👇
Councils, not those selling land, can benefit from the increase in land value due to changing use or reduce house prices by not passing that uplifted cost on to renters & buyers of the houses built on such land.
Housing policy needs to be part of wider social changes towards a more equal, community-centred, environmentally sustainable society, but good housing policy can make an important contribution to those changes
@scotgov should introduce passive standards for new buildings in Scotland while existing buildings should be retrofitted to the maximum technically feasible energy standard.
What is a District Heating System and why do I need it?
Yesterday we gave you problems. Today let’s look at the solution. 👇
A District Heating System is a method of distributing heat through a heating grid by creating a ring main carrying very hot water in highly insulated pipes fed by heat-generating plants at any point round its circumference & sub-grids to distribute hot water directly to homes. /1
Since all options for decarbonising heat are expensive & disruptive it is helpful to focus on the quality of the outcome.
It is the only future-proofed option since any new heat-generating technologies can simply be 'plugged in' to the ring main & feed the existing system. /2
In Scotland, 95% of our heating emits greenhouse gasses – the highest proportion in Europe. We need to change on a big scale & invest in a new heating system.
Here’s a thread to explain the challenges we’ll tackle this week. 🧵 /1
There are multiple ways of heating a house:
⚡️ Electricity
☀️ Solar thermal
🪨 Geothermal/heat recovery
⛰ Heat pumps
🏭 Industrial heat recovery
🗑 Waste incineration
🪵 Biomass
🔥 Biofuels
🅷 Hydrogen
But all of them present significant challenges…
/2
⚡️ Electricity
Would require all existing radiators & pipework to be removed/replaced, & double pressure on the grid which is esp challenging when usage in peak periods creates instability.
This is an expensive way to do it & could lead to a x3 increase in heating bills. /3
Buildings/insulation is not a particularly ‘sexy’ political topic, but undoubtedly one of the *most* crucial tasks of a #GreenNewDeal
We must stop heat leaks & upgrade/insulate our houses so they can achieve 70 - 90% thermal efficiency.
Take a look below to find out how 👇 /1
Achieving maximal thermal performance is likely to be unachievable in many houses & in many where it might be technically achievable, getting the last ten per cent or so of efficiency may be so expensive as to be prohibitive. /2
The Passivhaus standard assumes a thermal performance of 25 kWh/m2 per year, an 85% reduction in current average heating requirement & where this is achievable it is certainly desirable. The addition of zero-carbon heating infrastructure should help achieve the remaining %.
/3
@thecommongreen explains how what sounds like a large windfall from auctioning off our offshore wind potential, amounts to less than a stiff breeze compared to what we could have had if we'd kept our resources in public hands. /1
@thecommongreen Last week celebrated the £700m auction of Scotland’s offshore wind potential & the rent that will accrue to Scotland when the turbines are finally built. Based on the published figures for the rent per MWh & typical wind turbine performance, this could be £50-90m a year. /2
@thecommongreen Additionally, the complex web of fossil-fuel companies, foreign state-owned energy companies & financial holding companies standing behind as shareholders stand to earn profits of something like £5b per year once everything is developed & operational. /3