Britain’s net zero future hinges on a £35 piece of paper that is hopelessly flawed and wiping thousands off house prices

Britain’s charge towards net zero is gathering pace, but there’s a farcical flaw at the heart of it that is still not being addressed with any sense of urgency.

And that is the Energy Performance Certificates ( EPCs) that are used to gauge how good – or rather, bad – your home is for the environment. Currently all homes being sold or rented out have to be assessed and rated on a scale of A (most efficient) to G (least efficient).

EPCs were introduced in 2007 to raise awareness of energy efficiency and also give recommendations as to what could be done to bring down bills. Assessors can qualify after a few days of training and the assessments themselves are not thorough.

Yet the Government has put landlords on notice that they will soon have to have a rating of at least C to let out their properties, and mortgage lenders are primed to have an average rating of C across their books within a few years.

But a glaring problem is that these certificates, which cost as little as £35, are far from a precise science and can have perverse results. Despite their new-found importance, EPCs are hopelessly flawed.

As we report today on page 5, homeowners face a gamble when making energy upgrades and improving their rating.

Installing a heat pump could see your rating fall and people are being told to install wind turbines in cottage gardens to jack up their ratings. For some landlords, it makes more sense to demolish the house and start again.

Michael Gove, the Secretary of Levelling Up and Housing, has indicated that he’s aware that EPCs need an overhaul, but it does not look like that will happen any time soon. In the meantime, these fag-packet assessments are wiping thousands of pounds off people’s homes.

EPCs are typical of a short-sighted pursuit of targets. Solar panels will boost your score, but take decades to pay off and do not last forever.

The current system, based on how much it costs to heat a home rather than carbon impact, means you could reach the golden C rating by installing a more energy efficient gas boiler and putting in some insulation.

The blinkered following of arbitrary targets also risks penalising those who live in older homes that are harder and more costly to insulate.

England has some of Europe’s oldest housing stocks, with more than half of homes built before 1965, but the onus for upgrading them to hit net zero is being put squarely on the homeowner.

While green mortgages will offer better rates and longer-term loans to help borrowers get work done, those who own their homes outright will be forced to shell out or take on a new loan to make upgrades, or accept a lower offer when they come to sell up the property.

Homeowners are being forced to improve their energy ratings, but the measure being used is ridiculously inadequate – and the Government has admitted this.

If we are going to be forced to dig deep, the EPC rating system has to be replaced immediately.

‘The blinkered following of arbitrary targets also risks penalising those who live in older homes’