Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made
towards (1) the target for carbon neutral homes by 2050, and (2)
improving energy efficiency standards for existing buildings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy () (Con)
Between 2010 and 2019, UK energy consumption per household has
reduced by 21 %. Through our energy company obligation, we have
upgraded over 2.2 million properties since 2013, and this year we
announced a £2 billion green homes grant to help up to 600,000
more homes reduce their emissions.
(LD)
I thank the Minister for his Answer and I hope he will agree
that, with these things, the devil will be in the detail. For
example, the Government’s ambition to install 600,000 heat pumps
by 2028 is laudable, but how do they intend to incentivise owner
occupiers to meet the £10,000 upfront cost of installing them in
their homes? The retrofitting of homes, which is a massively
significant issue, has actually stalled. Can the Minister explain
why the Government believe that this has happened and say how far
the £2 billion grant that he just mentioned will actually go,
given that a report in 2017 to the energy efficiency group
estimated that £5.2 billion would be needed every year until 2035
to get all our homes up to the EPC band C level, which at the
moment 75% of our homes fail?
(Con)
we are making considerable progress towards the target, but we
recognise the role that energy efficiency will play in the
decarbonisation of buildings. We remain committed to meeting our
legally binding carbon budgets and will set out further action in
the forthcoming heat and buildings strategy.
(Ind
Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. The
Scottish Government have published proposals for point-of-sale
standards to require all owner-occupied homes to meet a rating of
EPC band C from 2024. Do the Government plan to implement the
Committee on Climate Change’s recommendation that all homes—not
just owner-occupied ones—are at least at band C by 2028?
(Con)
We are constantly improving the number of homes: 34% of homes are
now above EPC band C, which is up from 9% in 2009. Our various
funding schemes. such as the ECO scheme and the green homes grant
scheme, will all contribute towards raising those numbers.
(GP) [V]
My Lords, I am sure the Minister is well aware that, since 2017,
1 million homes have been built that will need retrofitting.
Yesterday, the MCS Charitable Foundation released its Energising
Advice Report. It recommends having a publicly funded one-stop
shop for advice to homeowners on how to retrofit their
homes—something to make it easy for them. Is that sort of advice
something the Government might accept?
(Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for drawing my attention to the
report, but we already have a digitally led advice service,
Simple Energy Advice, which provides tailored advice to
homeowners and landlords on energy performance improvements that
they can make to their homes. It also signposts further funding
and directs them to suitably qualified tradespeople
(Con)
I draw attention to my interests in the register. Carbon-neutral
homes will require a massive expansion of carbon-neutral
electricity. How confident is my noble friend in the optimistic
projections of the future cost of renewables and carbon capture
and storage, given that most large projects—from the Channel
Tunnel through nuclear electricity to HS2—feature enormous cost
overruns?
(Con)
I understand my noble friend’s scepticism on this, but I point
him to offshore wind, the cost of which has plummeted over recent
years. It is possible that we can meet the standards, but of
course we have to be fully aware of the potential for cost
overruns in the future.
(LD)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interest in the register as the
CEO of the Energy Managers Association. Covid has led to millions
of employees working from home, and while this would not have had
a major effect during the first lockdown, due to the lack of
heating, the second lockdown is of course during the winter and
there has been a marked increase in the amount of gas used by
people working from home and putting their heating on at times
when they would not have in the past. Have the Minister and BEIS
looked into the amount of carbon emissions that this has led to
in the UK? Are plans afoot to allow companies to install energy
efficiency measures if they are contributing to the fuel cost—as
they can under the Treasury rules—so that the home becomes a
place of work?
(Con)
The noble Lord makes some interesting points. I think we are all
aware of the limitations of working from home, but companies
should be as open and transparent as possible in their reports
about the energy and emissions that they are responsible for.
This includes employees who work from home.
(Con) [V]
My Lords, will my noble friend join me in congratulating National
Energy Action on all it does on home insulation and warm homes? I
have the honour to be the honorary president of National Energy
Action. Is it fair that new homes are still being built using gas
boilers, which will eventually be banned, given that there will
be an enormous cost for the occupiers of those homes in
retrofitting new boilers at some future date?
(Con)
We are consulting on these matters at the moment. The noble
Baroness makes a very good point and I happily pay tribute to the
work that National Energy Action does.
(CB) [V]
[Inaudible]—climate change risk assessment concludes that the
risks from overheating in residential and public buildings as a
result of climate change are a top priority for urgent action.
Can the Minister update us on progress in reducing this risk, and
explain what the Government meant when the noble Baroness said on
Tuesday that the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations
for the most cost-effective path for getting to net zero by 2050
are
“often a bit more ambitious than our plans”?—[Official Report,
8/12/20; col. 1109.]
(Con)
I did not hear the first part of the noble Lord’s question as he
was cut off. On the second part, I have not seen the remarks that
he refers to, so I shall write to him on that.
(Lab)
[V]
Point 7 in this scatter-gun 10-point environment plan identifies
another two missing strategies: the national retrofit strategy
and the fuel poverty strategy. What assessment have the
Government made of the “help to fix” interest-free loan scheme
proposed by the Chartered Institute of Building to deliver the
future homes standard, and will the fuel poverty strategy still
be forthcoming before the end of the year?
(Con)
We are committed to reviewing the decent homes standard for
social housing around energy performance and decarbonisation. We
will be consulting on further regulations for homeowners in 2021.
(LD) [V]
In Greater Manchester, there are over 1 million homes needing
energy efficiency upgrades but only about three homes are being
assessed daily, so a householder who applies for a grant today is
likely to face a three-month wait to get the go-ahead to start
work. It will take more than a thousand years, at the current
rate, to bring all Greater Manchester’s homes up to EPC level C.
Does the Minister now accept that recruiting and training green
home assessors, and upskilling the construction workforce, has to
be his top priority, and that underpinning that has to be a
decades-long investment plan to give certainty to those who are
ready to invest their lives in this key endeavour?
(Con)
I agree with the noble Lord that we need to invest further in
training opportunities and upskilling. There are many jobs
available in this sector and that is exactly what we are doing
under the green home grant scheme. As well as grants to home-
owners and the local authority delivery scheme, we are also
investing in training places to bring those new jobs into
fruition.
(CB) [V]
My Lords, much of the problem of poor energy efficiency in homes
is found in the private rented sector. Although the Government
have launched their fund for the decarbonisation of social
housing, what combination of sticks and carrots are they planning
to deploy to secure decarbonisation and energy efficiency in the
private rented sector?
(Con)
The noble Lord makes a very good point. Our stick is that we are
consulting on raising the minimum energy efficiency standards of
privately rented homes, and our carrot is that landlords can
apply through the green homes grant scheme to get grant aid to
help them.
(Con) [V]
Does my noble friend agree that the climate change commission’s
recently published sixth carbon budget just gives further impetus
to Her Majesty’s Government bringing forward more measures to
accelerate the rate at which targets can be met?
(Con)
Since committing in law to eradicating our contribution to
climate change by 2050, we have announced a series of ambitious
plans to cut emissions, including through the Prime Minister’s
recent 10-point plan. We will of course consider the committee’s
most recent advice carefully as we take further opportunities to
cut emissions and build the low-carbon future that we all wish to
see.
