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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support his Department provides to assist off gas grid households to purchase low carbon gas to heat their homes as an alternative to heating oil and where heat pumps are either unsuitable or cost prohibitive.

The Government recognises that biofuels such as bioLPG and bioliquid alternatives to heating oil may play a role in future off-gas-grid decarbonisation, particularly for those properties that are not suitable for a heat pump. The Department has recently published a Call for Evidence to inform the development of a Biomass Strategy. This strategy will review the amount of sustainable biomass available to the UK, including liquid biofuels, and how this could be best used across the economy to achieve our net zero target. It will also assess the UK’s current biomass sustainability standards, which are some of the most stringent in the world, to see where and how we can improve them even further.

The Department also provides, and will continue to provide, support for households that are off the gas grid to switch to low carbon heating, including in homes where heat pumps are unsuitable. The Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (DRHI) is targeted at (though not limited to) homes that are off the gas grid, and supports biomass boilers and pellet stoves, and solar thermal (for hot water) systems as well as heat pumps. The DRHI is scheduled to close in 2022, but the successor scheme to the DRHI, the Clean Heat Grant scheme is scheduled to launch in 2022, and will provide upfront capital grants for the installation of low carbon heat systems in domestic and small non-domestic buildings. The scheme will support homes off the gas grid to transition from high carbon fossil fuel heating sources such as oil to low carbon alternatives including biomass boilers where heat pumps are unsuitable.