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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that as many as possible (a) new and (b) existing homes reach energy performance certificate band C by 2035.

The Clean Growth Strategy outlined a number of policies and proposals to help us make progress against 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. This included:

1. A commitment to funding the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), until 2022 at a projected cost of £640 million per year, with an increased focus on supporting innovative measures in the scheme, and extending support for home energy efficiency improvements until 2028, at least at the current level of ECO funding. Between 2015 and 2020, ECO will upgrade around a million homes supporting £3.6 billion of investment.
2. 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 with a view to consulting on this in 2018 and looking at how social housing can meet equivalent standards over the same period.
3. 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.
4. 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 closed on 9th January 2018.Following an evaluation of the responses, we will publish an action plan setting out our approach to building the market, later in 2018.
5. Driving innovation to bring down the costs of improving homes. As part of this the government launched two new £10 million innovation programmes to develop new and improved energy efficiency and heating technologies to help reduce the cost of improving homes. The funds closed to applicants on 2 January, and we are currently reviewing bids.