It is an absolute scandal that people are still living in fuel poverty in a country as energy rich as Scotland.
The recent price rises by the main energy companies are major blows to hard-pressed Scottish households struggling to pay their energy bills.
Against a backdrop of soaring energy bills, the Scottish Government is doing everything it can, within its limited powers, to provide a wide range of energy efficiency measures to both individual households and to local authorities.
Throughout Scotland we have invested £220million on fuel poverty and energy efficiency measures between 2009-10 and 2012-13 and will spend nearly a quarter of a billion pounds over the period 2013-14 to 2015-16 on further initiatives.
In the north and north-east local authority areas – Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Moray and Highland – we have issued just under £9million in offers of grant for Home Energy Efficiency Programme Scotland (HEEPS) funding.
However, we need the full powers of independence to fully tackle all the causes of fuel poverty.
In the Scotland’s Future white paper, we set out how “green levies” being funded by government rather than energy companies would reduce energy bills by around 5% or £70 every year.
This is a fairer way of paying for energy efficiency measures than through people’s energy bills and would enable us to design a new means of funding, delivering energy efficiency improvements to Scottish homes that are fairer and better suited to our needs.
In contrast, changes to the UK Government’s Energy Company Obligation (ECO) – announced during the chancellor’s Autumn Statement last week – will significantly reduce resources, cutting expenditure in Scotland for energy efficiency saving and fuel poverty measures and will put further improvements in serious danger.
There is a wide range of financial support and offers available to Scottish households.
For more details contact the Home Energy Scotland hotline on 0808 808 2282 or visit homeenergyscotland.org.
Nicola Sturgeon is the Deputy First Minister of Scotland
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