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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department plans to produce and implement a revenue neutral plan to bring the domestic sector housing stock up to Energy Performance Certificate Band C by 2035.

The Clean Growth Strategy (the Strategy), published in October this year, sets out Government’s aspiration that as many homes as possible will be upgraded to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) band C by 2035, where practical, cost-effective and affordable. The Strategy set out a number of policies and proposals that will help us make progress against this aspiration, including:

1. Developing a long term trajectory to improve the energy performance standards of privately rented homes, with the aim of upgrading as many as possible to EPC Band C by 2030 where practical, cost-effective and affordable. We will consider options by consulting on this in 2018 and looking at how social housing can meet equivalent standards over the same period.

1. Investing around £3.6 billion to upgrade around a million homes through the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). In addition, we will extend support for home energy efficiency beyond the current commitment to fund ECO to 2022 and out to 2028 with funding, at least at current ECO levels.

1. Consulting on strengthening energy performance standards for new and existing homes under Building Regulations, including futureproofing new homes for low carbon heating systems, following the outcome of the independent review of Building Regulations and fire safety, and subject to its conclusions.

1. Seeking evidence on building a market for energy efficiency, including additional measures to improve energy performance of owner occupied homes through a Call for Evidence published alongside the Clean Growth Strategy. This Call for Evidence is currently open and closes on 9 January 2018. Following an evaluation of the responses, we will publish an action plan on additional market based measures later in 2018.

In the Call for Evidence on building a market for energy efficiency, we made clear that the government would adopt policies that help to meet our commitments at the lowest possible net cost to UK taxpayers, consumer and businesses; and which maximise the social and economic benefits for the UK from this transition.