Heat and Building Strategy

The UK Heat and Building Strategy, published on the 19^th October 2021,  sets out the UK Strategy for decarbonising our homes and our commercial, industrial and public sector buildings, as part of setting a path to net-zero by 2050, from the UK’s 30 million homes and workplaces, which account for almost a quarter of all UK emissions. In a simple, low-cost and green approach whilst ensuring this remains affordable and fair for households across the United Kingdom.

There are about 30 million buildings in the UK. Heating these buildings Addressing the carbon emissions produced in heating and powering our homes, workplaces and public buildings can not only save money on energy bills and improve lives. Still, they can support up to 240,000 skilled green jobs by 2035, boosting the economic recovery, levelling up across the country and ensuring we build back better.

Headline schemes such as the new £450 million Boiler Upgrade Scheme to support households who want to switch to low-carbon heat pumps with £5,000 grants are all well and good. However, this equates to around 90,000 new heat pump installations, which begs the question of where other monies will come from to help drive the journey to Net-Zero for other properties? Indeed, these figures fall well short of the Prime Minister’s ambition of 600,000 a year by 2028.

The strategy also seeks to address the need to improve “commercial and industrial places of work”, which account for one-third of UK emissions. For more significant commercial and industrial buildings (above 1,000m2), which account for about 7% of the stock, the Government is introducing a new innovative performance-based energy rating; a consultation for this will take place with the owner-occupier sector later this year.

Read the full Heat and buildings strategy