THE SCOTTISH Government minister responsible for zero carbon buildings has admitted that £33 billion plans to decarbonise homes have been too sluggish getting up and running.

Greens minister Patrick Harvie issued the warning to MSPs on Holyrood’s Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee – but insisted that councils can draw up five-year strategies without complete certainty over where the billions of pounds of funding will come from.

A key Scottish Government commitment is for all homes to meet EPC band C energy efficiency standards by 2032, despite an estimate £33bn price-tag – while gas central heating boilers are likely to be axed for all homes by the time Scotland ends its contribution to the climate crisis with a net zero date of 2045.

Gas central heating that produces carbon emissions is set to be banned from new homes in Scotland by 2025 – but work will need to be carried out to upgrade existing properties.

Nicola Sturgeon previously told The Herald that she was been speaking to financial firms in the City of London over their “willingness and desire” to help fund the key policy – with a reliance on public and private sector expected to be crucial.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon lobbying London firms over 'willingness' to fund net zero policies

Every Scottish council must publish its five-year local heat and energy efficiency strategy (LHEES) by the end of next year, but questions have been raised about the ability of authorities to do so without funding guarantees.

Mr Harvie told MSPs that “local authorities will need to be suitably resourced to undertake this new duty”, adding that ”Scottish Government officials are working together with Cosla to develop appropriate funding to enable local authorities to access the necessary staff capacity and technical skills to produce their local heat and energy efficiency strategy”.

The minister, who is also co-leader of the Greens, said that councils have an “absolutely critical role to play in the transition of Scotland’s building stock”.

He told the committee that it is important to be “looking at a wide range of finance solutions that are going to be necessary in the long term to deliver this muilti-decade programme of work” as well as “the large scale investment (from) both the public and private sector that is going to be required”.

Mr Harvie said: “Scotland and other countries are not yet at a place where we should be.

“A lot of this transition, in many people’s views, should have taken place a long time ago.

READ MORE: Patrick Harvie doesn't yet know how much of £33bn homes retrofit bill will come from private funds

“But now that we are underway, it’s very clear that local authorities with the resources that we are discussing with Cosla at the moment will have the capacity to deliver their first LHEES by the end of December next year.”

But the minister insisted “it would be wrong to assume” that councils cannot draw up their five-year strategies by December 2023 “until the financial taskforce has answered every question about the longer-term funding of the whole heat transition”.

As part of Mr Harvie’s heat in buildings strategy, the green heat finance taskforce has been established to attempt to lever in private investment by developing “a portfolio of innovative financial solutions”.

Committee convener and Conservative MSP, Dean Lockhart, pointed to previous comments made by Mr Harvie that the “vast majority of funding for the heat and buildings strategy will have to come from the private sector or at least public-private partnership co-financing”.

He added: “Where is the Scottish Government in terms of identifying mechanisms and identifying sources of private capital to finance the heat and buildings strategy? The question of how it is going to be financed is going to be absolutely central.

READ MORE: Sturgeon warned £33bn for decarbonising homes will be needed by 2025

“Will we have further clarity on the question of sourcing of finance over the next 12 months to allow local authorities to put together a proper strategy?”

Mr Harvie declined to say if further funding assurances would be given over the next year, instead stressing that the local plans can go ahead without further clarity.

He said: “The scale of investment that’s needed for the development of those strategies in the first instance over the next year and a half or so is of a significantly lower order of investment needed than the actual transformation of our building stock over the coming years and decades.”

The minister refused to say how much public funding is being talked about between the Scottish Government and Cosla, but said it was being “done in a way that’s cooperative and collegiate with local government”.