Cash pledge to boost the switch to green gas boilers as UN warns of climate ‘reality check’
CARBON taxes and more money to help homeowners switch to green boilers are under consideration by ministers, as a landmark UN report warned some effects of climate change are becoming irreversible.
The Government is examining proposals to extend both the cash amount of and the eligibility for a £4,000 “clean heat grant” due to launch next April to help households with the upfront cost of replacing a gas boiler, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, yesterday confirmed that his department’s long-delayed blueprint for cutting carbon that is emitted in the process of heating homes will be published next month.
The “heat and buildings strategy” will set out options for phasing out the sale of new gas boilers, with a ban on new installations from 2035 expected to be formally announced.
Mr Kwarteng said he was “very keen that something equivalent” to a green homes grant that was scrapped earlier this year is “brought back to encourage owner occupiers to take the steps to decarbonise their houses”.
He is discussing proposals with the Chancellor, alongside a potential “carbon tax route” that would force polluters to pay for their emissions, the Business Secretary told BBC Radio 4.
Calls are growing for ministers to spell out how they plan to achieve their goal of “net zero” emissions by 2050, ahead of Britain hosting the Cop26 climate change summit in Glasgow this November. A global group of scientists on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yesterday issued a “reality check” for policymakers ahead of the conference, which UN Secretary General António Guterres branded a “code red for humanity”.
The world will breach 1.5C of warming within two decades, the report warned, with some effects of climate change irreversible for thousands of years. Boris Johnson said that the report made for “sobering reading” and was a “wake-up call for the world to take action now”. Government sources told The Telegraph that ministers were examining plans to boost the “clean heat grant”, a two-year scheme set to run from April 2022, which in its current guise will offer homeowners a oneoff payment of £4,000 to help with the upfront cost of replacing a gas boiler.
One option is to boost the cash amount of the grant to incentivise more Britons to buy heat pumps, which currently cost around £10,000. “It could become more generous,” a government source said of the grant. The criteria for the one-off cash payment could also be widened to allow larger, non-domestic buildings to qualify, it is understood.