Building regulations should be changed so that no new homes are completed with gas grid connections after this year, an influential body has said.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s official advisory body on reducing emissions, outlined a range of measures needed to decarbonise the UK by 2050.
The committee said in a new report that an 87 per cent reduction in emissions is needed by 2040, compared with 1990 levels.
Some 60 per cent of the reductions will come from electrification, including replacing petrol vehicles with electric ones and gas heating systems with heat pumps. It said that by 2040 it believes half of all homes in the UK should have heat pumps, up from 1 per cent in 2023.
This requires the annual rate of heat pump installations in existing residential properties to rise from 60,000 in 2023 to nearly 450,000 by 2030 and 1.5 million by 2035.
The report said this rate of increase was in line with other countries and that heating systems would continue to be replaced at the end of their useful lives.
Other measures called for in its Seventh Carbon Budget report included:
- Reinstating the target that from 2035 all replacement heating installations should switch from gas boilers to heat pumps.
- Provide funding for insulation and energy efficiency installations in social housing and low-income households.
- Establish a “comprehensive multi-year programme” for decarbonisation of public sector buildings, with long-term capital commitments.
- Drive decarbonisation of non-road mobile machinery through regulations and, potentially, subsidies.
UK Green Building Council chief executive Smith Mordak said: “In this budget the Climate Change Committee make clear we need urgent action to electrify heating, insulate our homes and buildings and limit embodied carbon.
“The cost of inaction remains far greater than the price of transition. By acting now we can ensure that the places we live and work in enable people and planet to flourish.”
Fiona Hodgson, chief executive of the Plumbing and Heating Federation, a trade body representing businesses in Scotland and Northern Ireland, said a huge investment in skills training would be needed to meet the heat pump target.
She said: “Heat pump adoption cannot be driven by wishful thinking. The CCC and successive Westminster and devolved governments keep setting ambitious targets while ignoring the fundamental issue: there simply are not enough trained professionals to install them.
“Without serious investment in skills training and workforce expansion, the UK will fail to meet its heat pump targets. All governments need to stop offloading responsibility onto businesses and take action to ensure we have the people to deliver this transition.”
She added that if electricity prices remained significantly higher than gas, homeowners would not move away from gas boilers.
“The public will not be persuaded to switch to a more expensive heating system in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Without serious reform to energy pricing, the transition to low-carbon heating will remain a pipe dream,” she said.
Toby Perkins, chair of Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, said the heat pump target was an opportunity to create a huge number of jobs and boost the “thriving net-zero economy”.
CCC interim chair Piers Forster said his report was a “good news story about how the country can decarbonise while also creating savings across the economy”.
He added: “For a long time, decarbonisation in this country has really meant work in the power sector, but now we need to see action on transport, buildings, industry and farming. This will create opportunities in the economy, tackle climate change and bring down household bills.
“Our analysis shows that there is no need to pitch action on climate change against the economy. We will need government and business to deliver the investment, but we are confident that this Seventh Carbon Budget offers a secure, prosperous future for the UK.”
Elsewhere this week, the Treasury’s National Wealth Fund announced it planned to guarantee loans to the social housing sector worth £250m over the next six months to retrofit homes.
The cash, issued by bond market investors to the the Housing Finance Corporation, will go towards measures such as installation of low-carbon heating, insulation, low-carbon lighting, renewable energy, and ventilation and heating controls.
Some 34 per cent of socially rented homes in England have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating below C. The National Housing Federation estimates that close to £36bn of investment would be needed to fully decarbonise housing association properties.
