Comments attributed to Karen Boswell OBE, Managing Director at Baxi UK
As a company at the forefront of the energy transition, Baxi Heating has already made significant commitments regarding the future of our business through last year’s sustainability pledge. [1]
We are truly committed to developing and offering affordable low-carbon heating solutions to our customers. We are involved in ground-breaking demonstration projects with the Hy4Heat consortium, including the UK’s first hydrogen fuelled home in Gateshead, together with investing in Air Source Heat Pumps and Heat Network components.
To achieve net zero emissions how we heat our buildings must change. Not only does this require innovation from the heating industry but also a pragmatic policy framework to drive change.
As such we welcome today’s publication of the Heat and Buildings Strategy from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). This important document details a roadmap for the decarbonisation of heat which the industry can, and must, support.
We firmly believe that all viable technologies have a place, including electrification, hydrogen, and deployment of low carbon heat networks. BEIS is wise to leave these options open as it is abundantly clear that no single solution will deliver net-zero.
One key part of the strategy is the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, designed to encourage the uptake of heat pumps. In our recently published white paper on this subject [2] we highlighted that the £4,000 per installation grant originally consulted upon may not be sufficient to close the affordability gap. Therefore, we are pleased to see a higher grant level of £5,000 grant taken forward in the Strategy.
Last, but by no means least, we must collectively deliver a just energy transition, ensuring no households are left behind. Running cost is a critical consideration and fuel poverty has no place in one of the world’s leading economies. As such we have concerns over the proposals to reallocate the levy cost aspect of electricity bills onto gas bills over time. This is a sensitive topic which needs to be carefully considered. In our white paper we proposed an alternative approach which has the desired effect of improving cost-competitiveness of heat pump technology without disadvantage to those less able to pay or unable to join the first wave of switching to low carbon heat.
Read our white paper here.