Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to introduce affordable decarbonized household energy.

As stated in the Clean Growth Strategy (2017), the Government is committed to ‘phase out the installation of high carbon fossil fuel heating in homes not connected to the gas grid, starting with new homes, during the 2020s.’ The first part of this commitment, to decarbonise new homes, is being met through the Future Home Standard, on which government consulted earlier this year. The Future Homes Standard will require new build homes to be future-proofed with low carbon heating and world-leading levels of energy efficiency, and is set to be introduced in 2025.

Additionally, we are providing financial support to help decarbonise homes on the gas grid. This is being done through:

• The domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) – a support scheme for low carbon heat installations in domestic buildings that will remain open to new applicants until March 2022. As of September 2020, the domestic RHI has supported around 82,300 homes make the transition to low carbon heat.

• The Green Homes Grant – In his Summer Economic Update, my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a £2bn Green Home Grant scheme that will support homeowners and landlords in England to improve the energy efficiency of their properties, reducing energy bills and carbon emissions, and supporting a green economic recovery. Under this new scheme, the government will fund up to two-thirds of the cost of home improvements for over 600,000 homes.

We intend to publish an updated Fuel Poverty Strategy for England by the end of the year which will provide further information on our plans to support low income and vulnerable households as we transition to net zero.

The Energy Company Obligation, worth £640m per year, focused on low income and vulnerable households, has made around 2.1m homes more energy efficient since it began in 2013.