Phasing out fossil fuel heating from 2026 – is the countryside ready?

Near­ly a quar­ter of the UK’s green­house gas emis­sions come from heat­ing build­ings. If this heat isn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly decar­bonised it will be impos­si­ble for the coun­try to reach net zero by 2050. The government’s heat and build­ings strat­e­gy, pub­lished in Octo­ber last year, pro­vides pro­pos­als to achieve this by phas­ing out instal­la­tions of replace­ment fos­sil fuel gas and oil boil­ers. This will begin in 2026 for off-gas-grid homes, and 2024 for larg­er off-gas-grid busi­ness. This ‘rur­al first’ approach is almost 10 years ear­li­er than the moot­ed 2035 phase out start date for gas boil­ers for homes on the gas grid.

But what does this mean for off-gas-grid homes and busi­ness­es? While accept­ing not all homes are suit­able for heat pumps, they are the government’s favoured low-car­bon heat­ing solu­tion. But while heat pumps are undoubt­ed­ly a key tech­nol­o­gy for decar­bon­is­ing heat­ing, they cost con­sid­er­ably more to install than a gas boil­er and much more in a typ­i­cal off-gas-grid home, and the instal­la­tion takes much longer and is more dis­rup­tive to house­holds.

To bring down prices and increase inno­va­tion, the government’s Boil­er Upgrade Scheme is pro­vid­ing home­own­ers with up to £6,000 off the cost of low car­bon heat­ing sys­tems up to 2025. But even with this finan­cial help, typ­i­cial heat pumps are still like­ly to work out more expen­sive than a con­ven­tion­al gas boil­er. In fact, esti­mates for retro­fitting them on many exist­ing rur­al homes can cost more than £30,000, when con­sid­er­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy upgrades too, depend­ing on the com­plexity of the job.

Oth­er com­pli­ca­tions could also ham­per the shift to heat pumps. For one thing, there sim­ply aren’t enough heat­ing engi­neers with the exper­tise to install them today, so more will need to be trained. Ground-source heat pumps also require con­sid­er­able out­door space for a deep hole or long trench, mak­ing them unsuit­able for cer­tain types of build­ing.

Rur­al insu­la­tion chal­lenge

Cur­rent­ly, 88% of homes are below EPC band C, and the gov­ern­ment tar­get is for all homes to have an EPC rat­ing of C by 2035. Many will there­fore need exten­sive improve­ments to their insu­la­tion and heat­ing sys­tem – includ­ing replace­ment or addi­tion­al radi­a­tors, hot water tanks, upgrad­ed win­dows and doors – for a heat pump to work effec­tive­ly. They also vary con­sid­er­ably in design com­pared to sub­ur­ban homes, which makes instal­la­tions more com­pli­cat­ed. In short, off-gas-grid prop­er­ties could be the guinea pigs for the UK’s heat­ing tran­si­tion.

“Domes­tic off-gas-grid home­own­ers are going to be tasked with mov­ing from a well-estab­lished heat­ing sys­tem with a boil­er and a set of radi­a­tors, in a prop­er­ty that is built to accom­mo­date that lev­el of heat­ing, to one that is very dif­fer­ent,” says Andy Park­er, head of strat­e­gy and cor­po­rate affairs at Calor.

The cost of prop­er­ly insu­lat­ing a four or five bed­room off-grid rur­al prop­er­ty could run to over £30,000 in some cas­es, accord­ing to inde­pen­dent ana­lysts Gem­serv – and that’s on top of the cost of the heat pump itself. “The hous­ing stock in the off-grid mar­ket is hard­er to treat with insu­la­tion and oth­er heat sav­ing mea­sures,” says Andy Park­er, head of strat­e­gy and cor­po­rate affairs at Calor “…[and that’s] before you even get to find­ing an installer.”

Wor­ry­ing­ly, Park­er says there is a com­plete lack of aware­ness about the pro­pos­als in the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment. “We’ve done research with off-grid com­mu­ni­ties – not just our cus­tomers, but those run­ning on a vari­ety of oth­er heat­ing sys­tems – and very few peo­ple know about the 2026 date. We strong­ly advo­cate that the gov­ern­ment should adopt a ‘heat pump ready’ approach, tar­get­ing the most suit­able homes for deploy­ment first both on- and off-gas-grid.” This will allow installers and the sup­ply chain to increase their expe­ri­ence and capac­i­ty by focus­ing on more straight­for­ward installs.

Alter­na­tives to heat pumps

In under four years, many off-grid home­own­ers could face an unex­pect­ed­ly large bill if their heat­ing sys­tem breaks down. The government’s rur­al first pro­pos­al also appears to have come at the expense of sup­port for oth­er avail­able sus­tain­able solu­tions that could help to ease the tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuel heat­ing sys­tems.

Some of these alter­na­tive solu­tions are more prac­ti­cal than oth­ers. Bio­mass boil­ers, for exam­ple, can neg­a­tive­ly impact air qual­i­ty. Calor’s con­sumer research con­firms that off-gas-grid house­holds want to choose from a range of low-car­bon heat­ing choic­es, but they do not expect to pay more for their cen­tral heat­ing sys­tem than the cost and instal­la­tion of a con­ven­tion­al boil­er.

Calor’s Futuria Liq­uid Gas, also known as BioLPG, can be dropped into exist­ing LPG heat­ing sys­tems today. Futuria Liq­uid Gas is pro­duced from a range of sus­tain­ably sourced feed­stock includ­ing plant and veg­etable waste mate­r­i­al and can reduce CO2 emis­sions by up to 86%. This could be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the 69% of off-grid home­own­ers who indi­cat­ed it was very impor­tant that their future fuel sup­plies come from renew­able sources, accord­ing to Calor’s own research.

Futuria Liq­uid Gas is chem­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal to con­ven­tion­al LPG, so it is com­pat­i­ble with exist­ing LPG sup­ply net­works and boil­ers, with­out mod­i­fi­ca­tion. This also avoids the cost and dis­tur­bance asso­ci­at­ed with installing a heat pump, by pro­vid­ing the high tem­per­a­ture heat­ing nec­es­sary for many poor­ly insu­lat­ed rur­al homes and busi­ness­es.

“If you think about the old build­ing stock in the com­mer­cial are­na, whether that’s hotels, pubs or care homes, a lot of these are even hard­er to heat than some [rur­al off-grid] homes,” says Park­er. “The major­i­ty of them are run­ning on either LPG or oil boil­ers. A com­mer­cial heat pump install could take sev­er­al days, so the ben­e­fit from reduced dis­rup­tion for a busi­ness is quite sig­nif­i­cant. A switch to Futuria Liq­uid Gas from LPG is seam­less, and from oil it just requires a new boil­er and stor­age tank, with no inter­nal refurb work.”

Calor Futuria Liq­uid Gas can also form part of a hybrid heat­ing solu­tion by com­bin­ing with a heat pump. For exam­ple, dur­ing rel­a­tive­ly mild weath­er a heat pump may be capa­ble of pro­vid­ing all the heat­ing need­ed. “But when the weath­er is at its cold­est, or dur­ing moments of high­er demand, a boil­er could be used to sup­ply both the heat­ing and the hot water,” says Park­er.

There’s no sil­ver bul­let for decar­bon­is­ing heat for homes and busi­ness­es. Indeed, a range of solu­tions will be need­ed to decar­bonise heat across the UK’s 30m build­ings. But the government’s cur­rent ‘heat pump first’ strat­e­gy means there is not enough focus on oth­er options. And as Park­er says, while “heat pumps are going to be a real­ly sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the tran­si­tion, they’re not suit­able for every prop­er­ty that’s out there.”

To find out more, please vis­it calor.co.uk/futuria

Pro­mot­ed by Calor