The recommendations, which were provided in response to an inquiry about home energy efficiency and demand reduction, highlights that 100% renewable heating solutions are currently too expensive and impractical for the vast majority of UK households to realistically consider installing.
“Even with incentive payments, the majority of UK households just aren’t in a position to make the large leap towards wholly renewable heating,” said OFTEC director general Jeremy Hawksley.
Working towards a low carbon future for heating
Committed to working towards a low carbon future for heating, OFTEC has introduced renewable registrations to help its technicians expand their businesses and ensure they can advise customers on the full range of heating solutions available.
“DECC has already stated that its challenge is to ‘reduce CO2 emissions in the most cost effective way’ with a priority to ‘keep bills as low as possible for hardworking families and businesses’.
“We would like to see government harness the power of technicians by including them in the roll out of future policies,” said Jeremy.
With over 600,000 standard efficiency boilers still in use across Great Britain, OFTEC has repeated its call for a funded boiler replacement programme to encourage consumers to upgrade to modern condensing models. And, believing that ‘all current oil-using homes could convert to biofuel with minimal disruption’ OFTEC is promoting bio-liquids as a low carbon alternative to oil that can be used to power existing boilers.
“Presently, the current low price of oil makes switching to renewables even less attractive for many off-gas grid households,” added Jeremy.
“According to the latest figures from the Sutherland Tables, the annual cost of heating an average three-bedroom home on oil is now just £793 compared to £1,453 with an air source heat pump.”
www.gov.uk/government/news/new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy
