Why the Scottish Green Party won’t solve the climate change challenge

My objections to the Green Party are not because of their ideals, many of which I share, but because of their methods and the means by which they think the planet can be saved. It is my belief that in terms of our hopes of genuinely tackling climate change they are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

In trying to promote societal change in a democracy it is necessary to take as many people as possible along with you. Ideally a majority of the population. That is the way in which lasting change is best brought about. Humanity faces two immense and imminent threats, global warming and more generalised environmental degradation. Both issues have been hugely publicised over the last decade and more and yet the Greens remain a tiny party.

Alba was much criticised in the recent election for standing candidates only on the list. It was said that they were cheating and ‘gaming’ the system. If that is true then the Greens have been doing exactly that for many years. Alba sought to use this mechanism to force a referendum in the near future. I’m not quite sure what it is the Greens think they are doing. If it were not for the fact that they are able to ‘exploit’ the electoral system and have candidates elected on the list it is quite possible that the Greens would have no MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.

It takes a special type of round spectacled myopia not to view this as a badge of failure. The stark evidence of climate change mounts on an almost daily basis and yet after more than 20 years of devolution the Greens in Scotland remain a tiny minority party.

This is not because the public is unconcerned about these issues but because they remain unconvinced about the solutions proposed by the Greens. It is not the message that is the problem it is the messengers.

For example there are two common myths persistently peddled by the Greens. They suggest that the huge amount of energy used in heating, which is a very significant proportion of total energy consumption ( around 50% ), could be easily and significantly reduced in two ways. Firstly by the widespread adoption of heat pumps and secondly by means of a comprehensive insulation programme for our homes and buildings. All that is lacking, they claim, is political will.

The public are right to be sceptical. There are major and manifest problems with each of these so called solutions. Heat pumps have a small part to play in reducing our energy consumption. Insulation in theory is a great idea but there are hugely difficult practical problems with this too.  Neither is the silver bullet claimed by the Greens.

I will deal first with heat pumps. The problems inherent in adequately insulating our housing stock deserve a separate posting and I will write about that in a future piece. Heat pumps only really work with homes that are very well insulated. Houses built in the last ten years or so fall into this category. These newly built and well insulated houses amount to around 5% of the housing stock.

It is not enough to put some cavity wall insulation into an old house. For heat pumps to work, a home has to be completely wrapped in a thick layer of insulation. The roof, the walls and the floor all have to have a good 150-200mm of high performing insulation installed. So let me be crystal clear. Heat pumps just won’t work in around 95% of our homes and buildings.

They are a viable form of heating for around 5% of homes but even for those they are not the magical solution that is often claimed. Firstly they are expensive. About the same cost as a mid-range car and just like your shiny new car in ten years or so they will be getting crushed and ( hopefully ) recycled. In terms of savings on heating costs they will have come nowhere near paying for themselves in that period.

Heat pumps work best when coupled with underfloor heating. They can also be made to work with oversized radiators. In neither case will they heat your home up quickly. Typically they take a whole day to bring your home up to temperature and therein lies a further problem. They work quite well in northern European countries with very well insulated houses and consistently cold temperatures in winter. In Scotland where even in deepest winter we can have a mild, almost balmy, day followed by a bitingly cold day followed by another mild day they are always playing catch up with the weather.

In a modern, almost airtight, well insulated house the only way to cool them down is to open doors and windows. I have seen neighbours do just that in  suffocatingly warm houses on mild winter days and I have then heard them complain about how long it takes to warm up the house on the next cold day. The claimed efficiency of heat pumps quite literally goes out the window and in practice is therefore nowhere near what is generally claimed by manufacturers and others who have a vested interest in the sale of these appliances.

But even if heat pumps were as efficient as their proponents suggest, and delivered the two to one efficiency in heat delivery that is claimed, they will still leave householders with much larger heating bills. Electricity retails at around 15p per unit compared to gas at around 3p per unit. A simple calculation suggests a best case scenario where heat pumps will deliver heating bills of well over double what they are at present. In practice performance and cost is much worse. I have a large group of early adopters willing to attest to this.

This is something not much talked about by the Green Party nor do they express much concern about the scourge of fuel poverty that stalks the poor and the elderly across our country. Maybe it is their fierce idealism that keeps them warm or perhaps it is their thick hair shirts. Whatever the truth of that is, they certainly lack empathy and they lack the practical knowledge and understanding necessary to reasonably reduce our carbon footprint.

There are good solutions to climate change crisis but they will not be discovered or delivered by idealism alone nor by the authoritarian control freakery of the neo puritan urbanites in control of the Green party in Scotland.