The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee has published its Decarbonising heat in homes report.
The report highlights that decarbonising residential heating is a “difficult task due to the scale, complexity, and cost of the challenge”. It also concludes that an “absence of a clear, strategic policy direction for low carbon heating has created confusion and uncertainty in the transition to low carbon heating and has affected investor confidence” and calls for “a greater amount of clarity” to give the sector certainty and a clear direction of travel.
The committee recommends that the Future Homes Standard is brought in two years earlier than planned – in 2023 instead of 2025 – to minimise any retrofit needed on houses built now.
On the subject of heat pumps, the report states: “It is vital that the Government should meet its target to deliver a minimum of 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 or it will fall off course in delivering net zero by 2050. The Government has not outlined in the Heat and Buildings Strategy its plans for how it will meet the heat pump target and what contingencies are in place if the target is missed.”
The committee’s chairman, Darren Jones, told BBC News that the Government needed to replace the cancelled Green Homes Grant which provided funding for energy-efficiency measures, saying: “Ministers can’t simply leave this to the market – the government should tackle the cost of heating our homes in the round and bring forward joined-up policies that address these issues together.”
The Heat Pump Federation has responded to the publication, saying it “very much mirrors our own thinking on what needs to be done to decarbonise home heating”.
Bean Beanland, the HPF’s Director of Growth & External Affairs, said: “Whether on consumer awareness, skills & training, investment, future funding (affordability), the need for urgency, or the need for massive cooperation between both central and local government and industry, we agree, almost without exception, with the Select Committee’s findings and recommendations.
“Their report makes clear that rapid development of a Heat Decarbonisation Sector Deal must be a priority. This needs to include policy direction for the thirty years through to Net Zero 2050 and a domestic heat technology roadmap that has been developed in full collaboration with industry and crucially consumer groups. Consumers need to be positively involved in the Net Zero journey.
“The Government aspirations and the CCC targets for heat pump deployment are challenges that grow day by day, but if this Select Committee report can provide the springboard that launches an immediate redoubling of government effort against all of the recommendations, then the Federation and its members stand ready to share the burden.”
Read the full report here: Decarbonising heat in homes
