The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee has called on the government to significantly scale up its plans to install heat pumps in homes across the UK.
A government response to the committee’s report into decarbonising the way we heat homes included recommendations on how ministers can succeed in their goal of seeing 600,000 new heat pumps installed per year by 2028.
It accepted a number of the committee’s recommendations, including tasking Ofgem with regulating heat networks, where groups of properties share one heating system.
In its report the committee highlighted consumer complaints about heat network suppliers and called for this form of heating to be regulated in the same way as other traditional heating suppliers, such as gas companies.
The Queen’s Speech has announced that this will be done in the upcoming Energy Security Bill.
The government also accepted the need to train more workers, saying 7,000 training opportunities will be created per year thanks to Skills Bootcamps run in collaboration with local government.
However, whilst the government agreed with the committee that improving energy efficiency in homes will be an important “driver for decarbonisation” it did not come forward with any new proposals.
Darren Jones MP, chair of the BEIS Committee, said: “With the cost of everything from food to electricity, gas and petrol going up, and with further energy price rises due in October, the government must supercharge its efforts to decarbonise the way we heat our homes to help reduce bills and carbon emissions.
“However, the Future Homes Standard – which will require housing developers to better insulate new homes and install low carbon heating systems – will still not come into effect until 2025. This will put many new homeowners and tenants in the scandalous position where they have a new home but will be asked to fork out thousands of pounds to do the work that the developer should have done in the first place.
“For people living in properties that currently exist, ministers still haven’t dealt with the energy elephant in the room and brought forward a scheme that is open to all homeowners and tenants who need to insulate their homes and use less energy. This must be dealt with urgently.
“Ridiculously, the fact that home insulation needs to be completed before you can apply for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme means that many households won’t be able to access the voucher schemes already announced by Ministers in the first place.”