C O N T E X T 1 1 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 0 39 Dennis Rodwell Climate change and energy initiatives in Scotland The historic environment is a focus for the Scottish Government’s plans to make the country a world leader in developing technologies for a low-carbon economy. The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 is vaunted by the Scottish Government as the industrial world’s most ambitious. It is aimed at placing Scotland at the forefront of transitioning to a sustainable low-carbon economy, and making it a leader in the development of new solutions and technologies. While harmonising with the UK target of an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, from the same baseline date of 1990, Scotland has set a significantly enhanced interim target of a 42 per cent reduction by 2020, compared to 26 per cent under the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008. Government statistics estimate that the reduction in emissions in Scotland for the period 1990 to 2007 (the latest date for which figures are available) was 18.7 per cent. To reach the 42 per cent target by 2020 will therefore require an acceleration of initiatives. Action to achieve this is targeted across a number of policy areas, including energy, transport, the public sector, business, the food supply chain, and the environment. Scotland boasts an enviably strong natural resource basis for renewable energy: existing hydro-electric schemes dating from the 1930s; increasing macrogeneration from wind turbines; the largely untapped potential of tidal and wave power; and advances in the harnessing of solar energy, especially for microgeneration. Targets include the generation of 50 per cent of Scotland’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020, with an interim target of 31 per cent by 2011. Other sources of energy are less favoured in Scotland. Biofuels, for example, because of competing claims on the use of land, not least for agriculture; and – although not classified as renewable – there is currently a presumption against further development of nuclear power. In a parallel environmental initiative, the Forestry Commission is giving priority to the increase of forest cover in Scotland to 25 per cent. It is estimated that energy use in buildings accounts for up to 45 per cent of Scotland’s emissions, of which 30 per cent is attributed to the domestic sector. While the target for new-build housing is that it should be ‘zero carbon’ by 2016, an estimated 80 per cent of the houses that will exist in 2050 have already been built. Across Scotland, two per cent of the existing building stock is listed. The 20 per cent that was built before 1919 amounts to half a million buildings, of which 90 per cent comprise housing. Traditional construction methods continued in this sector well beyond this date, but the figures for this are not quoted. The historic built environment is expected to play a significant role in meeting the Scottish government’s ambitious reduction targets. It is primarily on the pre-1919 extent of the building stock that a raft of proactive initiatives are being researched and tested by Historic Scotland and others, including Changeworks, the EdinburghWorld Heritage Trust, and Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt and Glasgow Caledonian universities. Parallel research and testing is being carried out in England and on the continent. We are now in a critical period in terms of legislative imperatives and political pressures. Not only is The FalkirkWheel, opened in 2002, is a model of energy efficiency. It requires only 1.5kw of electricity to activate the hydraulic motors that rotate the canal boat lift. (Photo: Dennis Rodwell)
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