Phasing out gas boilers from 2035 is a part of the plans. – Shutterstock
The government has announced its heat and buildings strategy, which sets out its plan to “significantly cut carbon emissions from the UK’s 30 million homes and workplaces in a simple, low-cost and green way while ensuring this remains affordable and fair”.
The government said: “Like the transition to electric vehicles, this will be a gradual transition which will start by incentivizing consumers and driving down costs.”
There are about 30 million buildings in the UK. Heating these buildings contributes to almost a quarter of all UK emissions. The government says “addressing the carbon emissions produced in heating and powering our homes, workplaces and public buildings can not only save money on energy bills and improve lives but can support up to 240,000 skilled green jobs by 2035, boosting the economic recovery, levelling up across the country and ensuring we build back better”.
The government said that the heat and buildings strategy builds on the commitments made in Clean Growth: Transforming Heating, its energy white paper, and the prime minister’s 10 point plan. This strategy aims to “provide a clear direction of travel for the 2020s, set out the strategic decisions that need to be taken this decade, and demonstrate how we plan to meet our carbon targets and remain on track for net zero by 2050”.
The plan includes ensuring “virtually all heat in buildings will need to be decarbonised” to meet net zero. This buildings transition presents “huge opportunities for jobs, growth and levelling up”. The plan also states the aim to develop the market and bring down costs for energy-efficient low-carbon heat with heat pumps and heat Networks as “proven scalable options for decarbonising heat” which will play “substantial roles in any net Zero scenario”.
Julie Hirigoyen, chief executive at UKGBC, welcomed the government’s plans to move away from heating buildings with fossil fuels and ensure households are helped to make the transition to clean electric heating.
But she said: “Phasing out gas boilers from 2035 is not ambitious enough – there needs to be a clear cut-off date from 2030 to put us on track to meet net zero. And £5,000 grants will help just 30,000 households – a drop in the ocean in the context of the 900,000 annual installations we need to see by 2028. Worse still, there’s no targeted financial help at all for low income households to embark on the journey to clean electric heating – meaning that the gap between rich and poor will widen, not close.
“Yet more concerning is the strategy’s failure to address several key priorities that UKGBC’s recent work has shown are non-negotiable to a net-zero carbon built environment by 2050. The most crucial of these include a large-scale domestic retrofit programme; energy performance standards that rely on actual energy use; and an immediate drive to tackle embodied carbon emissions from construction and whole life... We need all of these policies – and more – if our built environment is to stand any chance at all of getting to net zero.”
Jamie Cameron, director of digital Solutions at Johnson Controls UK&I, said the strategy was "a positive start".
Cameron said: “As we look for urgent solutions to drive efficiency and sustainability, it’s clear that investments into smart tech from governments and businesses alike will be critical for us to achieve our net-zero commitments. Technology is the place to start, sooner rather than later. Technologies like IoT, AI and ML in buildings have the potential to transform the value delivered throughout its entire life cycle – from the early-stage design, through to the procurement and construction phase. Through the use of AI for example, building technology systems can automatically learn and improve from exposure to more data without being explicitly programmed. This data can then be utilised to benchmark building performance, monitor building equipment, ensure occupant comfort, forecast operational budgets and run the building autonomously in the most efficient way possible."
