Paul Burnett, managing director of Johnsons Controls business Asset+, comments on a National Infrastructure Commission forecast that eight million buildings will need to switch from gas boilers to cleaner alternatives.
The National Infrastructure Commission today stated around eight million buildings will need to switch from gas boilers, which currently heat around nine in 10 properties in England, to cleaner alternatives by 2035 to meet the UK's 2050 net zero target.
From 2025, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have said that there is a further 6 billion of new funding from 2025 for decarbonisation, mirroring the previous investments the government has made into their attempt to accelerate the heat pump market in the UK.
An unheralded success of the previous investment has been the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), aimed at non-domestic public buildings.
This scheme alone has seen Johnson Controls install circa 1,000 heat pumps into non-domestic public buildings over the last 3 years, accelerating public sector net zero goals.
For the UK to meet its net zero targets through switching the UK householder from gas heating systems to heat pumps will be a tough challenge.
Whilst a heat pump is extremely efficient, there is a commercial issue being that gas is significantly cheaper than electricity, so overall the introduction of a heat pump will not drive much of a bill reduction
Subsidies and grants have not done enough to meet this challenge, and have fallen significantly short of the government’s own target of 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero should be looking at Feed in Tariffs (FIT) or Renewable Heat Incentives (RHI) options to ensure the move from gas heating to electric heating is commercially attractive, incentivising decarbonisation and ultimately working towards net zero goals.
The government must reimagine what is possible and create a clear path to net zero success.
