Low-carbon Off-gas Grid Heating

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) on securing what is an incredibly important debate for many of my constituents, a huge proportion of whom are off-grid. For the sake of total transparency, my house is among those in my constituency that are off-grid.

I will pick up on the points made by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), focusing my comments on drop-in fuels and the options that are available for off-grid homes, other than heat pumps. As has been mentioned, installing an electric heat pump in some of the country’s oldest rural homes can indeed cost the £12,000 figure that we have had quoted, plus £2,000. However, I have also seen estimates for some particularly unique houses—those built out of forms of cob or, in my constituency, wychert—where the cost of installing a heat pump with all the necessary additional retrofit installations can be as high as £30,000. Of course, those heat pumps only work efficiently if—it is a huge “if”—the house in question has the highest standards of modern insulation. Many older houses do not, and indeed cob, wychert and thatched properties cannot be insulated because of the way they were built—the walls simply cannot be allowed to become wet or damp; otherwise, the materials will come apart.

At a time when the cost of living is rising sharply, it is critical that consumers and businesses across our United Kingdom have a range of technologies at their disposal, so that they are not obliged—this is about choice, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd said in his opening speech—to pick an option that may not be suitable for their property or that, as the hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned, would be unaffordable. There are clearly many options out there in the marketplace—some are available today, and some are clearly still in development but are close to being scalable to the point of production and wide-scale consumer use.

I have looked at this issue across not just the home energy sector but the transport sector, and I sincerely believe that drop-in fuels have to be part of the solution. An example is renewable liquid gas, which is a liquid fuel that resembles the same chemical and energy content as LPG but can be used as a drop-in fuel for existing infrastructure, boilers and solutions in people’s homes and businesses. However, it is produced through technology that utilises renewable feedstocks, meaning it has a low carbon content when compared with conventional LPG. Due to the drop-in nature, renewable liquid gases effectively utilise all of the existing infrastructure to deliver affordable decarbonisation solutions, particularly to the most hard-to-treat domestic and non-domestic properties that are off grid.

As rural electricity grids might need costly reinforcements as electrification marches forward in our country, as more and more people have a greater demand for electricity, not least for their personal transport and their cars, choosing a drop-in fuel solution for home heating and cooking may save not just the taxpayer money, but money and hassle for the citizens of our country as the infrastructure upgrades involved are either non-existent or very minor, as some heating engineers have told me—perhaps one or two filters in boilers having to be swapped out.

However—this is the problem that I bring to the debate this afternoon—there is currently a lack of recognition, particularly for renewable liquid gas and drop-in fuels more widely, from the Government and some suppliers. The key to enabling the supply and production of renewable liquid gas is a supportive political framework orientated to the long-term benefit of many families and businesses in off-grid locations. Are we not all seeking cost-effective and convenient decarbonisation solutions? It is critical that the upcoming biomass strategy explicitly recognises renewable liquid gas to ensure continued funding and development in this area. Affordable clean energy for families and businesses is key if we are to meet the 2050 net zero ambition.

Electrification is not always economically and technically feasible, especially not in the short term. Purchasing or, worse, borrowing to purchase expensive heat pumps and energy renovations is simply not a realistic option for many of my constituents and many off-grid people and businesses across our country, so I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to give us the good news that drop-in fuels and renewable liquid gas can be seen as a core central plank to the Government strategy going forward, so that we can avoid the cliff edge where people who cannot afford it or people whose homes cannot be fitted with it are not left with a singular option that does not work for them in future.