Scotland’s Heat Network Fund (SHNF) is a demand-led capital grant scheme designed to support the deployment and expansion of zero-emission heat networks across Scotland. All applications are assessed against mandatory criteria to ensure alignment with the Fund objectives, including reducing carbon emissions, tackling fuel poverty, and demonstrating value for money.

Data for the last full calendar year (2024)indicate that 7,355 heat pumps were installed in Scotland, 1061 more than for the last full calendar year. Over 2,500 heat pumps were funded by the Home Energy Scotland Grant and Loan Scheme in 2024.

The draft Circular Economy Strategy for Scotland is intended to work within the wider policy context for lifelong learning. The Scottish Government recognises the critical importance of providing the current and future workforce with high-quality lifelong skills, either acquired through new learning or upskilling and reskilling – and the pivotal role this plays in our plans to unlock Scotland’s green economic potential.

In the 2025-26 Programme for Government the First Minister confirmed his commitment to introducing a new Scottish Government-led approach to national skills planning, and strengthening regional skills planning, to ensure that post school provision becomes more responsive to Scotland’s strategic skills needs and priorities.

The new skills planning approach will develop a better understanding of skills needs at national and regional levels, and how we can address them, particularly where solutions lie within the education and skills system.

The Scottish Government is integrating sustainability and green skills, such as circularity, into apprenticeships in Scotland to ensure the system remains flexible and relevant as we transition to net zero.

There is strong emphasis on the delivery of apprenticeships in the sectors that are most vital to Scotland’s economy and society. These include those that support the transition to net zero, and are most likely to result in high quality, long-term employment and meaningful career pathways for participants.

Our apprenticeship programme aims to contribute to supporting net zero emissions by 2045 and Skills Development Scotland has committed to influence the skills system to be responsive to the climate emergency and help embed sustainability into learning provision.

The intention is that the Circular Jobs Tracker will utilise data that is publicly available, including, for example from the Scottish Supply-Use Tables

https://www.gov.scot/publications/input-output-latest and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency's Waste from All Sources dataset (https://www.sepa.org.uk/environment/waste/waste-data/waste-data-reporting/waste-data-for-scotland/).

The Circular Jobs Tracker will be publicly available, and the publishing frequency is yet to be determined.

In line with the Sustainable Procurement Duty in the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2014/12/section/9), public bodies are already required to demonstrate in their annual procurement strategies how they will prioritise and take account of climate and circular economy in their procurement activity and report ongoing progress against these commitments in their annual procurement reports.

Scottish Procurement Policy Note 3/2022: Public Procurement – Taking Account of Climate and Circular Economy Considerations clarifies expectations for public bodies with respect to addressing climate and circular economy considerations in procurement activity. The policy note can be accessed on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-procurement-taking-account-of-climate-and-circular-economy-considerations-3-2022/

Regulations under section 82 and 82A of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act could potentially enhance circular economy opportunities in relation to the procurement of goods, works or services. These powers allow Ministers to make regulations that require contracting authorities to purchase goods with recycled content, recycled or reused products or recyclable products. We have commissioned research to identify potential candidate products for these regulations.

Circular skills involve a range of skills such as repair, reuse, resource recovery and recycling as set out by Zero Waste Scotland on their website: https://cdn.zerowastescotland.org.uk/managed-downloads/mf-t4rmosgz-1729177635d

The Zero Waste Scotland report ‘The Future of Work: Baseline Employment and Skills Pathways for the Circular Economy in Scotland’ explores this in more detail:

https://cdn.zerowastescotland.org.uk/managed-downloads/mf-ta4osdo0-1677494902d

Learning for Sustainability (LfS), which includes sustainable development education, is an entitlement for all our children and young people through the Curriculum for Excellence. Within the Curriculum Improvement Cycle, which is being led by Education Scotland, LfS is highlighted as one of the cross-cutting themes – with production and consumption, climate change and nature being considered.

In the 2025-26 Programme for Government the First Minister confirmed his commitment to introducing a new Scottish Government-led approach to national skills planning, and strengthening regional skills planning, to ensure that post school provision becomes more responsive to Scotland’s strategic skills needs and priorities.

Several international circular economy strategies and approaches, in Europe and elsewhere, were considered during the development of the draft Circular Economy Strategy. This included, for example, international evidence such as the European Circular Economy Stakeholder platform to assist with the identification of priority sectors.

In June 2023, Zero Waste Scotland published an insights paper to support the Circular Economy Bill process which provided an overview and analysis of existing circular economy legislation internationally, including where duties had been placed on governments to publish circular economy or similar strategies. The paper is available on the Zero Waste Scotland website at https://cdn.zerowastescotland.org.uk/managed-downloads/mf-mr2nqf3d-1686671844d

Zero Waste Scotland has a long-standing relationship with all of the Enterprise Agencies, with a focus on collaboration and ensuring the collective support to businesses in Scotland is complementary.

They are actively working on a range of projects, including co-funding a post with South of Scotland Enterprise, supporting the European Circular Innovation Valley project with Scottish Enterprise, and looking at future opportunities to maximise the value from their collective expertise, skills and networks.

Scottish Procurement Policy Note 3/2022: Public Procurement – Taking Account of Climate and Circular Economy Considerations clarifies expectations for public bodies with respect to addressing climate and circular economy considerations in procurement activity. This can be accessed on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-procurement-taking-account-of-climate-and-circular-economy-considerations-3-2022/

In line with the Sustainable Procurement Duty in the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2014/12/section/9), public bodies should demonstrate in their annual procurement strategies how they will prioritise and take account of climate and circular economy in their procurement activity and report ongoing progress against these commitments in their annual procurement reports.

The analysis of public bodies’ annual procurement reports forms the basis of the Scottish Ministers’ Annual Report on Procurement Activity in Scotland. 80% of those who provided an annual procurement report in financial year 2022 to 2023 provided evidence of addressing environmental wellbeing and climate change through their public procurement activities. The Report can be accessed on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/annual-report-procurement-activity-scotland-overview-procurement-activity-2022-2023/