An all-party and influential committee of MPs says the UK should be put on a war footing to improve the energy efficiency of homes.
The Environmental Audit Committee is calling for “a national mobilisation” to reduce household energy bills, cut climate-changing emissions and reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports. And it says despite the government’s Energy Price Guarantee, the government has missed an opportunity to accelerate energy efficiency installations in the warmer months of 2022.
It continues that in England alone, over 13m or 59 per cent of homes are below EPC level C. The number of UK energy efficiency installations peaked in 2012 at 2.3m, yet in 2021 fewer than 100,000 upgrades were installed.
The committee is calling for at least one million energy efficiency installations a year by 2025, with an ambitious target of 2.5m properties a year by the end of the decade.
Such an effort would require funding, including investment in people to deliver this step change. A new Energy Efficiency Taskforce should be directed to estimate the levels of funding and workforce skills which will be needed and the MPs say a proportion of the windfall tax on energy companies should be allocated immediately to help fund energy efficiency improvements.
Other changes demanded by the committee include a greater focus on the potential of onshore wind and tidal energy, ending the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels, and setting a clear date for ending new oil and gas licensing franchises. The MPs are also calling for faster action from the oil and gas sector to reduce its operational emissions produced during oil and gas extraction.
Committee chairman Philip Dunne MP says: “To reduce the UK’s demand on fossil fuels, we must stop consuming more than we need. We must fix our leaky housing stock, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and wastes our constituents’ hard-earned cash: we must make homes warmer and retain heat for longer.
“The government’s welcome new Energy Efficiency Taskforce can lead a national mobilisation to install energy efficiency upgrades, which we would like to see achieve an initial target of a million homes a year and more than double this by the end of the decade. To help fund this, the government should funnel some of the revenue from the new Energy Profits Levy to crack on with the task at the earliest opportunity.
“The UK has enormous renewable energy potential and sectors such as offshore wind are booming. But more must be done to harness the opportunities which onshore wind, tidal and solar technologies provide. Developers should be required to fit solar panels on new homes as standard.”
The UK remains dependent on fossil fuels for 78 per cent of its energy needs. The committee concludes that as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK has been exposed to the biggest global fossil fuel price shock since the 1970s.
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"To help fund this, the government should funnel some of the revenue from the new Energy Profits Levy to crack on with the task at the earliest opportunity."
Therein lies the problem, the sums simply just dont add up. If every property needs to spend £30k as an average to get themselves to a C (I think its more than that), thats £480 Billion to find or one sixth of the GDP of the UK. We only spent £150 billion on the pandemic and thats going to take at least 25 years to pay off. You will be lucky if that's achievable by 2125 let alone in the next few years, by which time, like the forth road bridge we will need to start again.
If we do all this, what difference will it make? Absolutely none whatsoever. We are a small island and anything we do will be nullified when China opens yet another coal fired power station.
Some food for thought, google this theory that is gaining traction. Whilst global warming is an obvious threat to the planet, we are about 2 centuries too late to stop the end of the civilised world as we know it, the damage was done in the industrial revolution. The biggest problem is that we will run out of food by about 2200 based on the increase in population from 1 billion in 1970 to the 8 billion today. We are already seeing economic migration starting from Africa & the Midle East, that will now continue at pace as the population sprials out of control. Chaos and anarchy, survival of the fittest, the 1st world will be looted, pillaged, ransacked, homes abandoned. The future of our planet rests on population control, strict as well, not reducing carbon emissions, albeit one will take care of the other, we are using far less carbon per person that we ever have done, the fact is there are too many of us.
Matthew, the one thing the planet needs is less people, but it is the one thing politicians will not talk about.
Reply to Matthew, the global population in 1970 was 3.6 billion not 1 billion.
Keep you ignorance and prejudice to yourself please
Where is the ignorance ,?
Where is the ignorance ,?
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