There are close to 2 million heating appliances sold in the UK each year, over 80 per cent of which are domestic gas boilers. With 23 per cent of UK emissions coming from buildings, I am glad that the Government has confirmed that it is exploring cleaner, greener heating for our homes and buildings.

The Government is examining the role hydrogen could play in heating and will make a strategic decision in 2026. In addition, the Government is growing the installation of electric heat pumps, from 30,000 per year to 600,000 per year by 2028, which can be used as an alternative to a gas boiler.

More broadly, the Government has set a target that by 2035 as many homes as possible will use low-carbon technologies, such as electric heat pumps, or will support new technologies such as hydrogen-ready boilers, where the Government is confident clean and green fuel can be supplied. However, as part of a fairer approach, the Government will give families far more time to transition to heat pumps by delaying the ban on gas boilers to 2035, as well as providing an exemption to those households where it simply isn’t practical or affordable.

The Government has been clear that no-one will be forced to remove their existing fossil fuel boiler, but with industry confident that electric heat pumps will be as cheap to buy and run as gas-fired appliances by 2030, homeowners will be able to easily make these choices when the time comes to replace their old boiler.

To help consumers transition, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is seeing households offered grants of up to £7,500 for low-carbon heating systems, so they cost the same as a gas boiler now. 

I do think it is also important to look at making new build and existing homes as energy efficient as possible. Yet I welcome that as part of a more pragmatic and proportionate approach to reaching net zero, the Government has decided to scrap onerous energy efficiency requirements that required forced alterations, rather encouraging and continuing to subsidise energy efficiency programmes to reduce bills.

Finally, the introduction of the Future Homes Standard will ensure that from 2025, an average home will produce 75-80 per cent less CO2 emissions than one built to current energy efficiency requirements. Homes built under the Future Homes Standard will be ‘zero carbon ready’, which means that in the longer term, these homes will be future-proofed with low carbon heating and world-leading levels of energy efficiency. No further retrofit work will be necessary to enable them to become zero carbon homes as the electricity grid continues to decarbonise.