The Government has published its plan to try and make sure that the heating of buildings is low-carbon, simple, fair and cheap.
Climate change is a major issue for the world right now, fuelled mainly by releases of greenhouse gases. In the UK, homes are one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, with an estimated 25 million households running gas boilers for heating purposes. This will need to change to effectively tackle climate change.
The Government's plan is to incentivise householders to remove their gas boilers and to switch to cleaner heating options, such as air-source heat pumps. In order to facilitate this, the Government has announced a £450 million funding package which could see households claim £5,000 towards upgrading their heating systems. At the same time, it has announced that all new heating systems in UK homes will have to be low carbon from 2035.
The new grants, part of a three-year boiler upgrade scheme, will be available from April 2022 for those households wanting to install more efficient and low-carbon heating systems. This will mean that those looking to upgrade will pay roughly about the same as they would if installing a new gas boiler. It is important to note that at this point, the Government will not be forcing people to remove their existing fossil-fuel boilers. Instead it hopes that the transition period over the next 14 years will see UK households gradually move to low-carbon heating technologies.
Many have criticised the plan however, stating that the strategy is not ambitious enough. It could potentially cover a maximum of 90,000 heat pumps, whilst there is an overall aim to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028, meaning the grant would fall short of helping this aim. At the same time, experts say that new insulation and other improvements will be required if the switch is to be truly effective.
The boiler upgrade plan is part of an overall £3.9 billion plan to decarbonise both heat provision and buildings. The idea is that this larger sum will inject funds, for three years, into the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, the Home Upgrade Grant Scheme, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and the Heat Networks Transformation Programme. It will also help to reduce emissions from public buildings via the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.
Others believe that the grant is a way of encouraging the market to improve, which will eventually lead to the cost of installation of heat pumps being comparable to the installation of gas boilers. Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, said that this is "just the beginning. By scaling up the technology and supply chain in Britain, innovative companies like ours will soon be able to fit and run heat pumps without any Government support, bringing us one step closer to making the UK the Silicon Valley of Energy and creating thousands of clean energy jobs throughout the country."
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "As we clean up the way we heat our homes over the next decade, we are backing our brilliant innovators to make clean technology like heat pumps as cheap to buy and run as gas boilers – supporting thousands of green jobs.
Our new grants will help homeowners make the switch sooner, without costing them extra, so that going green is the better choice when their boiler needs an upgrade."
The government is also reviewing the potential role for hydrogen in heating buildings, with a decision expected by 2026.
