Energy and Net Zero Secretary Michael Matheson has pledged to maximise the use of public funding to accelerate the delivery of plans to tackle climate change.
The Resource Spending Review, published this week, committed the Scottish Government to increase spending on heat in buildings, active travel and peatland and woodland restoration.
Capital spending on programmes will also increase by over half a billion pounds over the next three years, to speed up the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and build climate resilience across Scotland.
The Scottish Government has also committed to increasing its efforts to leverage private sector investment in the transition to net zero, to make better use of limited public funds.
The Scottish Government pledged up to £75m per year to help deliver its building strategy programme pledging £1.8bn in investment towards targets to decarbonise over a million homes and 50,000 non-domestic buildings by 2030.
It will also commit £95m towards meeting woodland creation targets of 18,000 by 2024 and 2025.
The Scottish Government will provide £46m to introduce its community bus fund and increase in funding for concessionary travel schemes. It will also invest up to £150m of resources and capital in active travel.
It will invest more than £12m in peatland restoration to double the current restoration rate and put us on track to hit its target of 20,000 in 2025 and 2026.
It also pledged t£4m of resource spending alongside £150m capital and financial investment for the North East and Moray Just Transition Fund
Net Zero Secretary Michael Matheson said: “This spending review comes at a critical point in the global challenge to address the climate crisis. Tangible global action is becoming ever more urgent, and Scotland is committed to playing its part with some of the most ambitious, legally-binding targets in the world.”
Earlier in the week, we reported following a deep dive into the 79-page document to reveal that the budget for rural affair s, universities and police will drop by 8% - equivalent to a real-term cut of £1.1bn over the next four years.
The Scottish Government will also cut its budget for enterprise, trade and tourism promotion by 16% in real terms.
The tourism budget will receive £39.7m over the five years in total. This year the sector was receiving 18.3m in funding, but following the spending cuts it will only receive £5.3m over the remaining four years.
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