Energy: Housing

(asked on 4th March 2020) - View Source

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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to meet the energy efficiency targets for housing set out in their Clean Growth Strategy, published in October 2017.


Answered by
Lord Callanan Portrait
Lord Callanan
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This question was answered on 16th March 2020

The Clean Growth Strategy set out the aspiration that as many homes as possible will be EPC Band C by 2035 where practical, cost-effective and affordable.

The current iteration of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO3) will upgrade around a million homes for low income and vulnerable households by March 2022. ECO3 and its successor will drive £6 billion of investment between 2018 and 2028 to support energy efficiency improvements. Furthermore, the Manifesto committed to an additional £6.3 billion of public investment to upgrade the energy performance of fuel poor homes and social housing.

In April 2018, we introduced for the first time a minimum energy efficiency standard of EPC Band E for private rented sector properties, with all private rented properties required to meet, or exceed, this standard by 1 April 2020. We will be consulting in due course on options to increase this minimum standard to EPC Band C.

Last year, we launched Simple Energy Advice, a new digital and phoneline service to provide homeowners with impartial and tailored advice on how to cut their energy bills and make their homes greener, as well as information on any available financial support.

We also launched two energy efficiency innovation competitions in summer 2019, both aimed at investigating ways to make energy efficiency cheaper and more accessible for householders. The Whole House Retrofit cost reduction trajectory competition made available £9.4 million of funding for projects which demonstrate the potential to reduce costs for Whole House Retrofit. The Green Home Finance Innovation Fund is making nearly £2 million of funding available for a series of projects to develop innovative green mortgage and other lending products, to improve householder access to green finance to support energy efficiency retrofit.

We have also committed to consult later this year on requirements for lenders to support homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

Reticulating Splines