AgilityEco responds to ‘Powering Up Britain’
The Government has today issued a ‘blueprint’ for the future of energy in Britain, which aims to reduce carbon emissions, lower bills and achieve greater energy security.
‘Powering Up Britain’ outlines wide ranging plans including action on nuclear energy, renewables, carbon capture and clean heat.
AgilityEco’s focus is on domestic households, especially those on low incomes, and we summarise below the announcements related to our work:
The Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS): this is a rebrand of the previously-announced ECO+ programme, which the government consulted on last year (see here for our response at the time). The plans are very similar to the initial proposal: a billion pounds over the next three years, managed by energy suppliers, to deliver a single insulation measure to around 300,000 homes with an EPC rated D or below. The difference to the larger ECO4 programme is that the majority of funding (up to 80%) can be spent in better-off homes – people living in council tax bands A-D in England and the equivalent banding in Scotland and Wales. These households will need to contribute but the government is only expecting them to provide an average of 10% of the total grant so it may be an attractive offer for homes needing loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and heating controls. A potential blocker may be the requirement for the full PAS2035 quality assurance framework - the same retrofit assessment and retrofit coordination process used for complicated multi-measure retrofit installations under ECO4 and HUG. We have already seen huge demand for our Connected for Warmth Insulation scheme which has similar criteria, though it requires no customer contribution.
Changes to ECO4: added to the GBIS announcement are a few expected changes to ECO4 programme that will make it easier to support fuel poor households. These include amending the definition of ‘renewable heating’ to allow efficient electric heating to be installed (such as high heat retention storage heaters) where other low carbon heating solutions aren’t suitable.
Heat Pumps: the heat pump industry receives a boost with the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) being extended for a further 3 years to 2028 - this offers a £5,000 grant to any air source heat pump (ASHP) installation. An additional £30 million is being invested to try and catalyse private investment into UK heat pump manufacturing. An even bigger driver may be a revised consultation on the Clean Heat Market Mechanism, which from 2024 will require boiler manufacturers to sell more green heating products. Even with all of this the government’s aim to install 600,000 ASHP a year by 2028 still seems very ambitious.
Private Rented Sector Energy Efficiency: Disappointingly the government has again delayed its response to its consultation on Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) in the private rented sector. The proposal that was set out more than 2 years ago outlined a roadmap for private landlords to achieve a mandatory EPC rating of C in their homes. This would achieve billions of extra spending into the retrofit sector and take thousands of tenants out of fuel poverty, but a revised timetable is needed to ensure these plans are achievable. Also buried in the detail is a plan to consult by the end of this year on how to improve the energy efficiency of owner-occupied homes.
Fuel Price Rebalancing: Also of note was the ambition to ‘rebalance’ environmental and social levies from electricity to gas bills, which may help to reduce the bills of households moving to electric heating and is consistent with long term targets to reduce our use of natural gas for heating. The government aims to set out their approach within the next 12 months.
The total suite of announcements runs to over 1,000 pages so we will continue to review the proposals and provide further updates to our partners as appropriate.
In particular, we plan to provide a much more detailed briefing on the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) next week.