Half of homes need heat pump by 2040

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Half of homes need heat pump by 2040

Mark Poynting and Justin Rowlatt

BBC Climate & Science

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Four in five cars should be electric and half of homes should have heat pumps within 15 years, say the government’s independent climate advisers.

By law the *** must reach ‘net zero’ – no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – by 2050.

*** greenhouse gas emissions have more than halved since 1990, largely thanks to less electricity coming from fossil fuels and more from renewables. But the Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that to reach the 2050 target we’ll also need to change how we drive and heat our homes.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the government would consider the advice and respond in due course.

“We owe it to current generations to seize the opportunities for energy security and lower bills, and we owe it to future generations to tackle the existential climate crisis,” he said.

Under *** law, the CCC provides independent advice on how much the *** should emit over five-year periods, known as ‘carbon budgets’, and how it might get there.

Each carbon budget is a stepping stone to net zero by 2050. The latest advice is that by 2040, emissions should be 13% of their 1990 levels, for the *** to stay on track.

The CCC advice is not policy, but the government has historically accepted it. If it does, the target will become legally binding, but government will still decide how to achieve it.

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Meeting these long-term goals will mean significant changes in the years ahead. One-third of emissions cuts between now and 2040 need to come from households making low-carbon choices, the CCC says.

This will mainly be through switching from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles and from fossil fuel boilers to heat pumps, making use of growing supplies of clean electricity. Smaller contributions will come from other choices, such as eating less meat and dairy.

As the graph below shows, these changes are ambitious. But they are deliverable, argues the CCC, without people having to scrap their existing boiler or car early.

Other emerging technologies, like mobile phones and internet connections, have achieved similar rates of increases previously.

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Emissions cuts will be needed in other areas too, such as farming and flying, two of the hardest sectors to decarbonise.

The CCC no longer directly advises against net airport expansion, which it has previously. But it warns the costs of decarbonising aviation will need to be picked up by airlines, which will likely drive up ticket prices.

It says we will need to eat less meat and dairy too. In the CCC’s pathway, sheep and cattle numbers fall by 27% by 2040, and the area covered by woodland rises from 13% to 16%.

Cost of net zero

The costs of tackling climate change have become highly politicised in recent years.

The CCC estimates most of the expense will be borne by the private sector and calculates the savings from moving to more efficient technologies should outweigh costs by the early 2040s.

“We are crystal clear in this analysis, in this carbon budget, for the first time we start to see the economy making savings from this investment, and they make savings over and above what we would do if we stay dependent on fossil fuels,” Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the CCC, told BBC News.

This should improve energy security and filter down to lower bills in the long term, the CCC argues, provided the government acts to make electricity cheaper.

It advises removing policy costs – funding for social and environmental schemes – from electricity bills. That would cut them by around 19% based on expected 2025 prices, the CCC says, making it more cost-effective for people to switch to electric vehicles or heat pumps.

These costs could instead sit on gas bills or general taxation.

“Regardless of what you think about climate change, what we are laying out today is a massive industrial revolution,” said Ms Pinchbeck.

“It will save the economy money by 2040, it saves people money on their energy bills, it saves people money on their driving costs, but all of that is underpinned by a cheaper electricity price.”

Additional reporting by Becky Dale

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