Government has ‘no plan for decarbonising homes’

Liz Truss’ government is even less likely to push forward action on energy efficiency than the previous administration, Labour’s shadow climate minister has claimed.

Kerry McCarthy, who was appointed to the climate brief last summer, told a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference that home insulation efforts would suffer due to the “ideological impulse” that “completely dominates” the revamped government.

“We haven’t got a strategy from the government and we are even less likely to see a strategy from the new administration we’ve got now,” she said.

“Before, I think there was an issue about competence, and just not wanting to put money and resources into things. Now I actually think the ideological strand is so strong, things aren’t going to get any better.”

While Labour remains in opposition at Westminster, McCarthy called for Labour councils and combined authorities to get on with efforts to improve energy efficiency.

Pointing out that around 20 million people live in Labour run local authorities, she said: “Let’s show that it can be done. Let’s start.”

At the same meeting, which was sponsored by Cadent, ex-environment secretary of state Hilary Benn said that current government policy on energy efficiency and housing decarbonisation lacks coherence.

“The current government has no plan to decarbonize my housing. The sum total is 90,000 grants of £5,000 pounds and we’re talking about 22 million homes so very simply, you can see it doesn’t add up.”

He also called for supporters of heat pump and hydrogen to tone down the conflict over which is the best option for future home heating.

“Sometimes you encounter a bit of a punch up between the heat lobby brigade and the hydrogen brigade as if they’re having a war with each other. We haven’t got time to fight amongst ourselves. We need all of the technologies in order to be able to do this, but you need to send some signals to the market…. because there is going to be demand.”

However, he said that persuading many home-owners to accept energy efficiency upgrades would be “tricky” because adding wall insulation will often involve loss of internal living space.

The decarbonisation of heat will be one of the topics under discussion at the Utility Week Forum on 8-9 November in London. Find out more here.