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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans he has to include support for smart controls for domestic properties in his forthcoming heat strategy.

The Government is planning to publish a Heat and Buildings Strategy in due course, which will set out the immediate actions we will take for reducing emissions from buildings as part of an ambitious programme of work to enable key strategic decisions to set us on a path to decarbonising all homes and buildings.

Smart heating controls/smart thermostats are already a feature of existing heat and energy efficiency policy; for example, they are eligible for the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). Some variants, with additional features, have been approved under the ‘innovation’ element of ECO which means there is a greater incentive to install them.