My Lords, I should declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet. I shall address the two amendments in my name. I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but, in the interests of time, I shall limit my remarks on them.
Residential and commercial buildings together contribute about 25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and figures from the Climate Change Committee tell us that the UK has more than 2.5 million homes and another 1.9 million other buildings—offices, hospitals, shops, et cetera. The majority of those are heated by gas boilers, which also provide hot water, and the bulk of the rest use petroleum.
The Climate Change Committee also tells us that we cannot reach net zero if we continue to use gas for heat, so changing how we heat our homes and buildings is essential to reach net zero. Ending our reliance on gas can also help to reduce the cost of living through lower energy bills—something that should give us all pause for thought during debates on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, and I know it has already been mentioned by several speakers. When we add to that the estimated quarter of a million extra jobs that will be needed, relevance to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill just increases.
The Government should be given credit for introducing the future homes standard, which aims to ensure that new homes built before 2025 will produce 75% to 80% less carbon emissions than homes built under the current building regulations. The heat and buildings strategy states that from 2025 gas boilers will be banned from all new buildings and from 2035 boilers will start to be phased out from existing buildings. As far as we know, that is still the Government’s plan.
The question then is: what will replace gas boilers? My Amendments 504GJK and 504GJL are asking the Government to apply a bit of scientific rigour to answer that question and to be guided by objective evidence as we take these momentous decisions on major changes to our infrastructure that will be with us for the next several generations.
The facts are that there are plans for a hydrogen village pilot. There has already been a heat pump pilot, albeit nearly all air source, which is different and has been shown to be 40% less energy efficient than ground source heat pumps. There have also been various central plant district heating demonstrator projects. That is all excellent, and to be applauded, but there is no plan to pilot networked ground source heat pumps, and that is a gaping gap. A demonstrator pilot is sorely needed, because although networked heat pumps have plenty in common with individual heat pumps and with district heating, and often get lumped in with one or the other, the reality is that networked heat pumps is a very different approach and need to be assessed and evaluated on its own merits.
What is it? A ground source heat pump—which I shall refer to as a GSHP—network works by installing shared network pipework containing water for multiple
homes to connect to, as opposed to each home needing the space for its individual ground source heat pump. The under-street network absorbs heat from the ground at a near constant year-round 10 degrees centigrade, and applies it to each home’s heat pump, where it is condensed and increased to the heat required for space heating and hot water. It is worth noting here that in most homes, the heat pump unit will be smaller than a gas boiler.
In a GSHP network, the infrastructure is owned and paid for by a third party, with each home paying an annual fixed network fee. The best way to think about a GSHP network is that the infrastructure reflects the gas grids we currently have, which are owned by utilities, and we would in the same way pay to connect to a heat network. Ground source heat pump networks have the potential to reach parts that other heating solutions cannot.
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It is claimed that networked ground source heat pumps provide the best clean heat solutions for many properties for which other solutions are not suitable. Let me just go through some of the other solutions, which are all perfectly relevant and work in the situation to which they are suited. For example, many properties, such as tower blocks or closely packed terraced houses, are not suited to individual air source heat pumps as they lack the space and distance from neighbouring properties. Additionally, as air source heat pumps use around 40% more energy than ground source heat pumps, relying exclusively on the former will place a much greater strain on the power grid and require more electricity generation capacity.
I will move straight on to hydrogen, which provides a heating solution for only a small proportion of homes due to the prohibitively high costs of producing and transporting it. There is also the safety consideration. Hydrogen is the lightest element of the periodic table and is notoriously hard to contain; it is also highly combustible, of course.
Ground source heat pump networks have the potential to reach parts that other heating solutions cannot. We need to evaluate them thoroughly and support them if they can be useful in weaning us off fossil gas. I also want to mention their use in social housing. Currently, around 200,000 high-rise social housing homes are heated by direct electric heating. Networked ground source heat pumps provide a pretty good, if not ideal, solution for many social housing properties. Air source heat pumps are not suitable for most tower blocks and the only other heat options are electric radiators or night storage heaters, which use three to four times more electricity than ground source heat pumps.
To finish, I want to mention a pilot called “Heat the Streets”. It is a world-first pilot project installing ground source heat pump networks on the public highway in the Cornish village of Stithians. It connects around 30 houses to the heat grid. It is delivering results in terms of providing proof of concepts; understanding how people take to it and whether they like it; and identifying the challenges in delivering it on a larger scale. It is proving popular with residents; a positive write-up by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin appears
in the FT. It will be critical to follow up on the pilot project in Stithians and build on the lessons learned with a larger-scale pilot project, which is what my amendments are asking for. I look forward to receiving a positive response from the Minister.
Amendment 478 is on rooftop solar. I look forward to the new report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, The Rooftop Revolution: Unlocking the Potential of Rooftop Solar in an Energy, Climate and Cost-of-Living Crisis, which will be launched tomorrow. It is such a shame that we have pre-empted its launch by a day. I am sure that it will strongly reinforce the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It is good to know that since this amendment was first tabled, the Government have made positive commitments on solar, including taking forward the recommendations in the Skidmore review calling for a gear shift in delivery to achieve renewables targets, including the solar and onshore wind revolution. That is all well and good, but more must be done to achieve the Government’s “70 gigawatts by 2035” ambition. It is vital that the new solar taskforce take forward industry recommendations at the pace and scale needed.