COP26, the environment bill, the sixth carbon budget, the UK hydrogen strategy: 2021 is proving highly important for the UK’s energy and environment policy. Climate change related matters continue to feature heavily in mainstream media, all the while reinforcing the notion; we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Winter is coming and unlike our planet, UK homes need heating up. This is problematic, and not just because of rising gas prices. Heating homes contributes to 14%(1) of the UK’s carbon emissions. It’s clear that decarbonising UK homes is both a financial and environmentalpriority.
The eagerly awaited Heat and Buildings Strategy aims to solve this problem. It’s due imminently and is being implemented to help homeowners transition to low carbon heating solutions.
From a policy standpoint, the strategy comes at an important time. The Government threw the renewables sector into chaos by axing the Green Homes grant early. Meanwhile, another key support for industry and consumers, the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive, is due to end in March 2022.
The fact is existing government plans don’t go far enough to meet their own legally binding commitments to tackle the climate crisis. The future of heating needs to be green, and all eyes are on the Heat and Buildings Strategy to deliver this going forward.
A Post-Heat and Buildings Strategy UK
The Heat and Buildings Strategy will include schemes that make low carbon technologies more affordable for UK homeowners. With the installation of gas and oil boilers being banned from 2025, the question is: Which low carbon technology will the Government favour?
The Government will likely rely on two technologies to deliver net zero UK homes: heat pumps and hydrogen boilers.
There is a danger that the Government will place too much weight on hydrogen boilers as a mechanism for delivering net zero homes. Green hydrogen is the only type of hydrogen which iscarbon neutral. However, it is currently far too expensive and won’t be cost-competitive until 2030.(2) When it comes to domestic heating, we simply cannot wait this long before bringing down emissions.
The case for heat pumps
At this stage, the clear frontrunner for domestic heating is heat pumps. The UK government has set a target to install 600,000 heat pumps by 2028. However, a recent Climate Change Committee report has suggested upscaling to 900,000 installations per year if the commitment is to align with the UK’s net zero targets. As part of the Heat and Buildings Strategy, we can hope for realistic action plans on how the UK can achieve this target.
Heat pumps powered by renewable energy function with up to six times more efficiency than hydrogen boilers, are much cheaper to run and work at 50C or above, just like properly installed boilers.
Ground source shared loop heat pumps look particularly interesting for community heating projects. Just as we now have a gas main, we could well end up with most homes connected to a low-temperature heat main.
We still need hydrogen
The issue with home heating is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Whilst new homes are blank slates and present an opportunity for change, heat pumps may be unsuitable for existing smaller homes due to space restraints or in colder parts of the UK, for example. It is therefore likely that the Heat and Buildings Strategy will outline a combined solution of both hydrogen and heat pumps; but this split must be properly informed.
In the cases where hydrogen is required, Government policy should focus on the generation of green hydrogen from the electrolysis of water rather than production of blue hydrogen from fossil fuels. Blue hydrogen production requires the capture of residual carbon leftover from the processing and therefore is significantly less climate friendly.
Another issue with heat pumps stems from the installation process; they have high upfront costs and will require significant training to take place as engineers aren’t accustomed to their installation process. Unlike hydrogen, which can be easily integrated as fuel in existing infrastructure, the widespread adoption of heat pumps will require significant upskilling of the workforce.
While expensive, a recent report (3) has found that a significant increase in the deployment of heat pumps, with grants to cover costs, could create up to 138,600 new jobs and boost the economy by £9.8bn by 2030. Government Policy could therefore capitalise on the economic benefits that would result from with widespread adoption of heat pumps in the UK.
UK home cover – an opportunity for change
How we heat our homes is changing, and the home cover market is changing with it. Currently dominated by a couple of legacy brands, the industry has a bad reputation for price hiking, low levels of innovation and poor customer service.
Customer centricity has not been core to decision making and as the current home heating market is being uprooted, companies that help consumers navigate these changes quickly and efficiently are becoming the new frontrunners. Hometree is plugging this gap in the UK’s home cover market. With fair prices, a no claim, no-price hike policy and the best rated customer service amongst competitors, the customer is at the heart of our business model.
Hometree is committed to supporting sustainable energy usage. We’re at the forefront of servicing electric boilers, and we will continue to deploy significant efforts towards viable emerging sustainable technologies such as domestic heat pumps.
Government support for a mixture of both hydrogen and heat pumps will be essential in the next five to ten years. The Government need to invest in a significant training programme for contractors, the retrofitting of the millions of modern homes in the UK whose infrastructure currently will not support heat pumps, and significant subsidies on heat pump manufacturing costs.
Without this combination, the transition will not be effective. The UK is leading the way to a greener world that’s also affordable for consumers. There’s a long way to go, but we’re committed to that future. We await the Heat and Building Strategy report with bated breath.
Sources:
(1) Institute for Government, Decarbonising heating at home
(2) Recharge News, ‘Green hydrogen will be cost-competitive with grey H2 by 2030 – without a carbon price’
(3) Cambridge Econometrics, Greenpeace: The economic impact of decarbonising household heating in the UK
Author: Simon Phelan, founder of Hometree
