Starmer’s net zero targets ‘will need more heat pumps and electric cars’
Households will need to switch out gas boilers for heat pumps and use more electric cars to meet the UK’s new net zero targets, Sir Keir Starmer’s top climate adviser has said.
The Prime Minister announced his target to cut emissions by 81 per cent by 2035 at the Cop29 climate summit in Baku on Tuesday.
Sir Keir insisted he would not be “telling people how to live their lives” as part of efforts to meet the ambitious targets, instead relying heavily on the Government’s target for a green power grid by 2030.
“That’s the single most important target on the way to the emissions,” he told broadcasters in Azerbaijan.
But Emma Pinchbeck, the head of the climate change committee, said the green power grid would be insufficient to meet the Government’s 2035 target and would result in a need for people to switch gas boilers for heat pumps and use electric cars.
“They’ve done the job with working out how to get a lot of clean, cheap domestic electricity,” she told The Telegraph. “We need to get technologies into people’s homes so they can use the electricity.”
“What we’re looking for is progress on heat decarbonisation and transport decarbonisation and renewables.”
She said the “secret weapon technologies for the next decade are heat pumps and electric vehicles”.
The 2035 target is referred to as a nationally determined contribution within the UN climate process, and is a stop on the way to its overall target of net zero by 2050.
All countries will have to produce a new target next year as part of the UN process, but the UK has moved early as Sir Keir seeks to promote the country as a climate leader in the face of growing scepticism within Europe and from the incoming Trump administration.
In his speech at the summit in Baku on Tuesday, Sir Keir said that his Government was “restoring our role as a climate leader on the world stage”.
The climate change committee has previously suggested heat pumps need to be installed in around a million homes a year by 2030 to hit climate targets. Around 61,000 heat pumps were installed in buildings around the UK last year.
Household reluctance has been blamed on high installation costs, which are around £10,000 without subsidies, and concerns over reliability.
The Government has stopped short of introducing a ban on new gas boilers, which many green experts say will be necessary to achieve the take up of heat pumps.
Simon McWhirter, the head of the UK Green Building Council, which advises the Government, said the scale of the challenge meant the UK needed to retrofit two homes every minute to get to net zero.
“We can’t get to an 81 per cent reduction by 2035 by just decarbonising the grid,” he said. “It will require a significant amount of behaviour change by individuals, families, communities, up and down the land, it definitely cannot be outsourced as a decarbonised grid issue.”
On Tuesday, Ed Miliband dismissed suggestions that the 2030 green power goal would require households to use electricity at different times of the day.
A report by the Government’s National Energy Systems Operator said it would require a four times increase in flexibility around when households use their electricity to balance the grid during times of high demand.
“There’s been some nonsense talked about this,” Mr Miliband told Sky News. “To be absolutely clear, this is giving people the power so they have better control. It is putting power in the hands of consumers.”