The government’s climate change watchdog is likely to recommend regulations to ban all new fossil fuel domestic heating from 2035, its chief executive has revealed.
Chris Stark, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), told a conference on energy efficiency organised by Westminster Forum yesterday (23 April), that his body is likely to recommend new regulations to stop the installation of fossil fuel fired domestic heating systems after 2035 when it submits its latest set of official advice to government later this year.
Applying this regulatory deadline would mean all fossil fuel heating systems, including gas boilers, would have to scrapped by 2050 when the UK is due to hit its net-zero carbon emission target, he said.
The CCC’s advice on how to reach net zero, published last May, said that fully decarbonising heating by the middle of this century implied regulation “by 2035 at the latest to ensure all heating system replacements are low-carbon”.
The CCC is likely to set out in more detail what that these regulations might look like later this year.
Explaining the rationale for the tougher regulations, Stark said: “Current policy is still failing to drive up energy efficiency take up. We need to see further action coupled with cost effective take up of low-carbon heat.”
The government has adopted the CCC recommendation that gas boilers should be banned from new homes from 2025, which is due to be implemented in the Future Homes Standard (FHS), consultation on which recently concluded.
Stark also said the Covid-19 crisis had “sadly” interrupted “really positive momentum” on climate change across government.
This included the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which he said had not been engaged enough with climate goals in the past but had been making good progress on the production of the FHS.
Stark expressed hope that this momentum would not be lost, including at the Treasury which had been considering “serious spending” on action to tackle climate change before the crisis erupted.
He said: “There is a very good and very senior team at the Treasury, which was not there the last time we had a recession.”
At the same event, Jenny Holland, public affairs specialist at the UK Green Building Council, criticised the government for a proposal to remove ”fabric first” energy efficiency rules from its latest update of the building regulations.
The proposal would mean less reliance on improving the energy efficiency of the building’s fabric, such as using double instead of triple glazing for example, and more on deployment of low-carbon heating and micro-generation devices.
“The proposal is bonkers: we shouldn’t be placing totally avoidable demand on the electricity system”, Holland said.