Phasing out New Fossil Fuel Heating
A Proposal to Regulate the Carbon Intensity of Retrofitted Heating Systems, a 2025 report by the Sustainable Energy Association.
Policy background – The UK Parliament has legislated to meet net zero emissions by 2050, with a 68% emission reduction target from 1990 levels to be achieved by 2030 – a target which is understood on an economy-wide basis to be particularly challenging. Reflected within the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) recent Carbon Budget, it notes UK progress in decarbonisation as slow and currently behind the curve.
Within government’s long-term agenda for decarbonisation, domestic heat has been a notable priority over the years. Energy is required to heat the UK’s 28 million homes and as of 2021, was responsible for 18% of total UK emissions. A failure to decarbonise domestic heating has not necessarily been due to government inaction, as government continues to allocate bottom-up policy funding towards schemes designed to improve the uptake of low-carbon technology. Rather, it is a failure to roll out a successful series of policy ideas which effectively incentivise low-carbon technology adoption, and accurately consider the state of the UK supply chain at the time of each schemes implementation.
Decarbonising space and water heating requires increased adoption of low-carbon technologies and a gradual reduction in fossil fuel boiler installations until they are phased out entirely. In the new-build sector, the Future Homes Standard—set to be implemented by the Government in 2025—will regulate the maximum emissions intensity of new homes to a level unachievable with fossil fuel boilers. This will compel developers to adopt alternative, lower-carbon technologies for space heating and hot water. However, new builds represent only 10% to 15% of the market, with annual fluctuations depending on total boiler sales and the number of homes constructed.
Furthermore, the high costs of energy disincentivises the uptake of low-carbon heating and hot water systems within the retrofit market. This is further exemplified by increasing levels of fuel poverty in the UK, slowing down progress to eliminating fossil fuels.
