Community Energy England has called out the inadequate £3.9 billion funding that was recently allotted for decarbonising heat and buildings by the Government’s October Heat and Buildings Strategy.
The strategy builds on Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution.
In a statement on 20 October, Community Energy England lauded the release of the "long-awaited" strategy which seeks to drive down the cost of low carbon heating technologies and phase out fossil fuel-reliant heating systems by 2035.
The strategy eyes banning new natural gas boilers from 2035. Moreover, it shares that it will decide on hydrogen use for heat in 2026 and commits to seeing "as many homes as possible" attain EPC band C over the next four years. It also states its ambition to ban new gas boilers from 2035.
However, it said the amount is "not anywhere close" to the £9.2 billion pledge for home energy efficiency improvements stated in the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
To further demonstrate its point, Community Energy England said the strategy pledges £450 million over three years to fund grants for heat pump installations, which only makes up 30,000 installations per year against the 600,000 per year target of the government by 2028 and the 900,000 annual targeted installations by the Climate Change Committee.
Whilst there is "some potentially good news" in the Heat and Buildings Strategy, it is "still not ambitious enough and is conspicuously quiet on energy efficiency to complement the heat pump rollout," said social enterprise York Community Energy in a separate statement.
It pointed out that the funding under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme "is not going to stretch very far." From April next year, the scheme will provide a £5,000 grant for customers switching to an air source heat pump or £6,000 for those shifting to a ground source heat pump.
The fund will cover at most 90,000 heat pump installations in comparison to the over 30,000 installations made each year around the country and the 100,000 yearly installation target starting in 2024 set by the Climate Change Committee.
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