Research carried out by Scottish Power and the WWF have found that the UK Government are on track to miss their energy goals. The target was to lower household energy demand by 15% by 2030, as written in 2022’s autumn statement.
The statement announced that 6 million homes would need to be fitted with insulation, however, the UK is currently only set to deliver on 1.1 million homes by the target deadline. This is a similar case for heat pumps within homes, as research from Frontier Economics has stated that 1.5 million homes need to be fitted with heat pumps. Whilst there are an added 600,000 that require connections to the heat network.
Homeowners have been warned that without these energy saving technologies they could be facing huge energy bills. Isabella O’Dowd, the WWF’s Head of Climate has stated that:
“We know insulating homes protects consumers from high energy bills and we can’t wait until winter – summer is the time to fix the roof. With our homes accounting for 16% of the UK’s carbon emissions, the UK Government must act now and tell us how it will insulate the extra five million homes it needs to keep us on track to meet its green ambitions and drive down bills.
Insulating millions more homes is vital for the Government to meet its energy efficiency target and could benefit households to the tune of hundreds of pounds every year.”
Homes that already have these energy saving technologies fitted such as insulation, heat pumps and solar panels, that also reduce emissions, will save the average household around £2,300 on their energy costs.
These figures, however, are not promising when looking at the target the government has set. Especially as experts are now calling for this 15% reduction to be increased to a 20% reduction. This means that the target would increase to 5.4 million homes that require suitable insulation and 1.4 million homes would need to be fitted with a heat pump.
For the UK to reach its 2050 net zero target, research carried out by the Bankers for Net Zero and the Green Finance Institute states that over 28 million homes must have implemented the use of low carbon solutions and energy saving technologies.
