‘Bring forward Future Homes Standard launch’, heat pump industry argues

The Heat Pump Federation (HPF) is urging the government to heed the advice of the BEIS Select Committee and bring forward the introduction of the Future Homes Standard to 2023.

Bean Beanland, director of growth and external affairs at the HPF trade body, said calls from the cross-party watchdog to accelerate the implementation of the UK’s Future Homes Standard by two years would be a welcome move to incentivise low carbon heat.

He said, “Avoiding the unnecessary cost of upgrading new build homes will be of massive benefit to consumers. In-home thermal storage and consideration of heat networks are both critical elements in this segment.”

Mr Beanland was responding to the publication earlier this month of the ‘Decarbonising Heat in Homes’ report by parliament’s BEIS Select Committee.

The findings warned that existing government net zero commitments were presently insufficient to meet targets for cutting carbon emissions from buildings and how they are heated.  They called on the government for stronger commitments to ensure UK homes can be switched to lower carbon heating technologies over the next two decades.

Mr Beanland said the committee’s conclusions largely matched the views of the HPF and its members on how best to ensure hundreds of thousands of heat pumps are installed annually in the UK by the end of the decade.

He added, “Whether on consumer awareness, skills & training, investment, future funding (affordability), the need for urgency, or the need for massive cooperation between both central and local government and industry, we agree, almost without exception, with the select committee’s findings and recommendations.”

“Their report makes clear that rapid development of a Heat Decarbonisation Sector Deal must be a priority. This needs to include policy direction for the thirty years through to Net Zero 2050 and a domestic heat technology roadmap that has been developed in full collaboration with industry and crucially consumer groups.”

Future Homes Standard

The HPF said it backed the committee report’s call to introduce the Future Homes Standard from next year to better build the UK’s capabilities to install and support heat pumps.

The Future Homes Standard, set to be implemented in 2025, is expected to ban the use of heating systems that are exclusively designed to operate on fossil fuels in new homes. This would prevent the use of existing natural gas boilers in new construction by the middle of the decade.

The BEIS Select Committee said it acknowledged that the government wanted to ensure the HVAC industry had time to develop supply chains before introducing the standard in 2025.  However, it argued that waiting for three years to introduce the new standard risked undermining national heat decarbonisation plans by requiring new buildings constructed over the next three years to require retrofitting work.

The committee’s report said, “It is unnecessary to wait until 2025 to implement the Future Homes Standard. To minimise expensive retrofit costs, the Government should bring forward the implementation of the Future Homes Standard to 2023 instead of 2025.”

Rebalancing electricity costs

The HPF also noted the importance of delivering on the government’s pledge to address the operational costs of heat pumps. Specifically, the trade body highlighted a need to rebalance taxation on electricity when compared to fossil fuels, while ensuring that a widescale transition towards heat pump systems is fast but also affordable to consumers.

Mr Beanland said, “The government aspirations and the Climate Change Committee (CCC) targets for heat pump deployment are challenges that grow day by day, but if this select committee report can provide the springboard that launches an immediate redoubling of government effort against all of the recommendations, then the federation and its members stand ready to share the burden.”