I have received a number of postcards asking for urgent action to make homes more greener. These cards will have crossed with an announcement from the Government that it has introduced a £3.9 billion fund to decarbonise heat and buildings. Part of the reason for doing this is to drive down the cost of clean heating in homes so that carbon emissions can be lowered and also that consumers can be protected. Recent volatile gas prices have highlighted the need to double down on our efforts to reduce Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels and move away from gas boilers over the next decade to protect consumers in the long term. That is why we have set out how we will incentivise people to install low carbon heating systems in a simple fair and cheap way - backed by new grants of £5000 for homeowners through a new £450 million 3 year boiler upgrade scheme.
The Government takes our transition to net zero and a greener future after the pandemic very seriously and I will engage with my colleagues at the Treasury on the topic of green investment, and make sure that they are aware of the strength of feeling on the matter.
The UK was the first G7 economy to legislate to achieve net zero emissions, and I welcomed the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan, which will allow us to forge ahead in eradicating the UK’s contribution to climate change. This plan will mobilise £12 billion of government investment to create and support 250,000 highly-skilled green jobs across the UK. It is expected to spur over three times as much private sector investment by 2030. The plan is particularly important in the run up to hosting the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021, where the UK will call for further global action.
The UK will produce enough offshore wind to power every home, quadrupling how much is currently produced to 40GW by 2030. The Government will work with industry and aim to generate 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes. In addition, the Government aims to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade. The UK will also become a world leader in carbon capture technology to store harmful emissions away from the atmosphere, with a target to remove 10MT of carbon dioxide by 2030.
The plan also includes a target to install 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028, £1 billion funding to make our schools, hospitals, and homes more energy efficient, planting 30,000 hectares of trees every year, promoting and investing in zero-emission transport, and £20 million to develop clean maritime technology.
