An energy minister has warned that bad practice by “cowboy” heating installers could be “disastrous” for the roll out of efforts to tackle emissions from homes.
At a fringe meeting at last week’s Conservative party conference, Lord Callanan said he receives complaints “every week” from members of the public about the quality of installations of heat pumps and other low-carbon heating systems.
He said: “There are a lot of cowboys and cowgirls in the market who are providing lots of bad advice to people
“We need to make sure the consumer experience is good.
“If they start to get a bad reputation in the market, it would be disastrous for the roll out.”
The minister expressed related concerns about the quality of some heat networks, which had been installed as an “afterthought” by developers, who had “disappeared”, leaving a contractor to manage them.
Often the networks did not work as well as they should, while costing “a fortune” for residents, some of whom did not realise what they were signing up to.
The government is seeking to address these issues by giving councils to powers to designate heat network zones and improving the regulation of the sector, Lord Callanan said: “If have no choice about using a particular area network, there needs to be robust price framework in place.”
Toby Park, principal advisor for energy, environment and sustainability at the Behavioural Insights Team, also told Energy UK’s annual conference later in the week that poor experiences for customers pose a risk to the drive to decarbonise home heating.
“So many things can wrong and bad news spreads fast,” he said, adding that hearing about poor installation experiences would “rapidly diminish trust in the overall narrative of the net zero agenda.”
“When people will start to associate these policies, not only with costs, but screwing up their comfort, we need to be really careful that we don’t run before we walk.”
More broadly, Park told Energy UK delegates that the public did not yet recognise the scale of change required in this area over the next ten years.
He said this, along with the hassle involved in replacing boilers with heat pumps, means that ensuring price parity between gas and electricity will “arguably” not be enough to persuade customers to make the switch, and that measures like the ban on internal combustion engine vehicles will have to be introduced.
But the government could boost the public conversation about the transition to net zero by taking its own highly visible steps in this direction, Park said: “What could have an outsize effect is government leading by example. There is a huge public building estate that uses a lot of energy so upgrade that and electrify its vehicle fleets
Besides the direct impact of making such changes, this “really signals the importance and legitimacy of the issue and builds up a public narrative,” he added.