Net zero boast always was posturing tosh

SNP Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan (Picture:Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

Unbeknown to members of Edinburgh City Council’s policy and sustainability committee, as they were meeting on Tuesday, SNP Net Zero secretary Mairi McAllan was telling MSPs that legally-binding plans passed in 2019 to cut emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 were “always beyond what was possible”.

What then are we to make of the council’s always impossible boast that it would achieve absolute net zero in the same year, and 15 years ahead of Scotland?

It was posturing tosh then and it still is now, and a report to Tuesday’s committee revealed that just getting the council’s buildings to net zero would cost billions and all they have available is £34 million. It remains beyond staggering to all but the most blinded climate zealot (aka the Green Party) that this is even being contemplated.

In Elgin, the cost for decarbonising just one Victorian Crown Office building soared to £3.5m at the start of the year and is out of action for months while the work is done, and will take hundreds of years for it to pay for itself.

Historic buildings like the City Chambers “can add to the complexity and cost of retrofit” says Tuesday’s report, as if the Elgin experiment is a secret, and it admits “retrofit business cases are currently unlikely to offer a conventional return on investment.” In other words, there won’t be one. Yet on Edinburgh plods, as long as proposals are reasonable − reasonable if you forget taxpayers must foot the bill, not the council.

Net zero boast always was posturing tosh - John McLellan