The unveiling of a further £1.545 billion for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme from 2025-2028, among other initiatives, reflects a commitment to driving low-carbon heating, reducing carbon emissions and assisting households in England and Wales to transition to heat pumps.
Furthermore, a new £400 million energy efficiency grant, set to launch in 2025, will enable households in England to make impactful changes such as upgrading to bigger radiators or implementing better insulation- more details to follow. This grant, coupled with the proposals outlined in the Future Homes and Building Standard, consultation, reinforces the government’s commitment to ensuring that all homes are energy-efficient and reduce carbon emissions.
Other notable announcements include:
A new local authority retrofit scheme, allocated £500m to support up to 60,000 low-income and cold homes, including those off the gas grid.
The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, allocated £1.25 billion to support up to 140,000 social homes to be retrofitted.
The Green Heat Network Fund, allocated £485 million to help up to 60,000 homes and buildings access affordable, low-carbon heating through new heat networks.
The Heat Network Efficiency Scheme, allocated £45 million to improve around 100 existing heat networks.
An additional allocation of £15 million to the Heat Pump Investment Accelerator programme.
Commenting on the announcement, Charlotte Lee, Chief Executive of the Heat Pump Association said: “The £1.545bn confirmed additional funding for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme for 2025-2028 is a very welcome boost for the heat pump sector. It shows a clear commitment to supporting the deployment of heat pumps and is equivalent to a 240% uplift in current annual funding. Whilst the boost for the future BUS is very welcome, we would like to see a firm commitment from the Government to increase the 2024-2025 BUS budget which remains at £150m and at that level, risks restricting growth in the market during this time.
The popularity of the BUS since the grant upliftt in October 2023, has demonstrated the public understands the benefits of moving away from fossil fuels to heat pumps and will commit to changing the way they heat their homes when it makes financial sense to do so. We call on the Government to urgently take meaningful steps to reduce the price of electricity, in line with their commitments, to further support the economic case for change and to enable meaningful, sustainable growth in heat pump installations.”
Our recently published paper ‘Unlocking Widescale Heat Pump Deployment in the UK’ called for the government to commit to budgets for the Boiler upgrade scheme during 2025-2028 so it is a welcome move to see the Government confirm this. The Heat Pump Association welcomes the government’s commitment and looks forward to collaborating on the detailed implementation of these initiatives.
More details of the announcements can be found here.
Read the HPA’s paper on ‘Unlocking Widescale Heat Pump Deployment’ here.