I strongly oppose all the proposals in this Heat in Building Bill consultation.
Firstly, I strongly oppose the misleading context set in the factually and scientifically erroneous “Ministerial Foreword”.
Whether those errors are because Mr Harvie has been badly advised by the civil service or because he is a commonly foolish politician, this foreword does not reflect well on the ministerial competence of Mr Harvie, the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament.
“the climate crisis” is patently NOT “the most significant challenge of the 21st century” – that’s a ridiculous claim by Mr Harvie.
Already the global COVID pandemic, which has killed about 18,000 Scots and 230,000 Britons, has been more challenging than the “climate crisis”, left to its own devices, could reasonably be expected to become.
The wars in Ukraine and in Israel-Palestine are presently much more challenging for the people in those countries than the climate there which they’d be so happy to enjoy in peace.
Therefore to begin with a foreword leading off with such hyperbolic nonsense puts the whole of this consultation on a shaky foundation.
The most significant challenge of the “climate crisis” such as it is, is the recklessly dangerous half-baked government policies which have been proposed and already pursued whose generally unforeseen consequences could easily be far worse than the climate change they are proposed to deal with.
In particular, the proposal to capture, concentrate and store massive quantities of carbon dioxide (“Carbon Capture & Storage”) is a folly which may only be revealed to the general public to be of apocalyptic consequences when the CO2 leaks to form poisonous, low-lying clouds of gas which could cause mass deaths on a scale not seen since the Bhopal disaster and possibly far worse.
See my renewable energy blog post entitled “Carbon Dioxide Apocalypse” at this link.
My remarks above set a rational context in which this consultation should be answered – alert to the real possibility that the proposals therein may be so worthless or dangerous that we may be much better off doing absolutely nothing than proceeding as proposed.
The Ministerial Foreword correctly says “we need further clarity on the steps that the UK Government could and should take to make the transition package complete”.
But that is the understatement of the year. The UK government could and should commit to outlaw mass storage of carbon dioxide because deadly leaks of CO2 entirely invalidate each and every proposal in this Heat in Buildings Bill consultation.
For example, by the fact of not heating homes using gas boilers, more gas is burned at Peterhead to generate power for heat pumps or other electrical heating and the carbon dioxide combustion products from burning that gas are then stored but which later leak to kill people in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire or beyond then it is not valid to claim with any confidence that the heat pumps used are “clean heating” and the gas boiler use avoided would have been relatively “polluting heating systems”.
Fossil fuels burned in gas boilers are less polluting than fossil fuels and biofuels burned for carbon capture, storage, CO2 leaks and mass poisoning disasters.
Heat pumps are more polluting than gas boilers if the electricity to power those pumps leads to mass poisoning disasters from CO2 leaking from mass storage.
Therefore if carbon capture and storage is a real and present danger, as it is in my scientific opinion, then the safest course of action is to continue to use gas boiler central heating so as to minimise the CO2 poisoning disaster risk associated with increased electricity generation to power the heat pumps or other electrical heating.
It is a fallacy to assume that the Scottish government can safely proceed with phasing out gas boilers and rolling out electrical heating until such time as a guarantee in law or is otherwise declared that no electricity used in Scotland would be generated from fossil fuels or biofuels whose combustion products would be captured for mass storage of carbon dioxide.
In the absence of such a reassuring guarantee or declaration then there is no way of knowing or safely predicting which heating system is cleaner and which is more polluting and it is, at best, a stab in the dark to make one heating technology legal and the other illegal.
I propose therefore to suspend this consultation until such time and the threat from carbon capture and storage has been neutralised.
For that reason, I AM OUT!
See – ScotGov’s Stark-mad, Skea-keech plan to ban gas boilers
Scottish Scientist 