The Scottish Government has issued a discussion paper intended to support engagement on a just transition for the built environment and construction sector.
… built environment and construction sector currently accounts for around 40% of our emissions in Scotland…
Scottish Government writes:
….The draft Plan will be published in late 2023/early 2024. The targeted action plan and route map will outline the key steps to delivering a fair transition for the sector.
To reach net zero, our approach to the built environment will transform over the coming years. This will have consequences for both new and existing structures and require greater consideration of the lifecycle of buildings and building fabric performance. It will change the way we approach planning and design, the choices we make about construction materials and methods, operation (through power and heating etc), ongoing maintenance and the way we subsequently re-purpose buildings/materials and the place they’ve occupied.
The built environment and construction sector currently accounts for around 40% of our emissions in Scotland. The sector will underpin the delivery of our net zero future throughout Scotland, delivering our homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces. Construction accounted for £6.6 billion of Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2020, 8.1% of Scotland’s total GVA. With a turnover of £17 billion (8.2% of Scotland’s total) in 2020, the sector provided employment to 158,000 people in 2021. This will be the engine of our transition, delivering the necessary revolution in retrofit and buildings fit for the future.
A focus on standards in the construction sector will be critical for emissions reductions, sustainability, climate resilience and, crucially, for attracting the skilled and diverse workforce required to deliver these.
The net zero transformation will impact on a number of areas such as skills, supply chains and our manufacturing sector. It will affect communities and businesses across Scotland.
The Built Environment and Construction Just Transition Plan will be about identifying the particular challenges and barriers faced by different sections of society to make the changes needed to reach net zero and ensuring that our approach responds to these adequately. We need your input to make sure we are considering all aspects of the transition.
The scale of change needed across our built environment is significant: the aim of this paper is to be concise and accessible rather than all encompassing. And we are also setting out to avoid duplication with other existing work. For example, decarbonising the way we heat buildings is critical for net zero and has considerable overlap with energy efficiency and retrofit activity. As heat demand will be covered in the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan, a draft of which was published in January, we have not included it within this paper. Given that a discussion of heat decarbonisation could sit in both of the just transition plans, we would welcome views on where it should sit in the final drafts. Access to affordable, sustainable, comfortable housing is another area of critical significance that is not directly dealt with here. We appreciate there are consumer issues around both heat demand and housing stock and it would be helpful to further understand through our engagement the extent to which the final drafts of our Just Transition Plans should consider these.
