11:00 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

The simplicity of such a revolution has already been demonstrated. People will have boilers in their homes for the long-term foreseeable future. What is more, about 1.5 million boilers break down or retire and are replaced every year, so it is not difficult to see that, if future building regulations favour micro-CHP boilers as replacements, that would happen not with a great deal of fuss or with many lifestyle magazine articles, but with a further leap forward for domestic energy sustainability, which we will have to work on urgently over the next few years, as the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), is well aware, with the emergence of the green deal and the energy company obligation.

The second boiler revolution could act just as dramatically in reducing emissions. Even if those 1 million boilers replace older condensing boilers, rather than non-condensing models, after a 10-year life, they would generate a saving of more than 2 million tonnes of CO 2 , which is about half the total estimated CO 2 savings that the Committee on Climate Change has pencilled in by 2020 for the results of greater efficiency in household appliances. That would be a dramatic contribution to emissions abatement.

Of course, although micro-CHP is energy and climate efficient, it does not qualify for the renewable heat incentive as far as heat production is concerned for the obvious reason that, all other things considered, it is not fuelled by renewable energy. However, of course, it could be supplied in the form of biogas on an off-grid basis. I am not sure whether the Department would, in those circumstances, accept that micro-CHP would qualify both for RHI and FITs, but I imagine that that is a debate for another day. The fact of the matter is that a technology and an industry that can do great things are now waiting. The sector needs the confidence and future intent to enable it to scale up to the levels needed to produce a large intervention in the UK’s boiler landscape at a price that will eventually be at or close to those of more established boiler installations.

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11:15 The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)

I am mindful that we need to revisit Government support and leadership. I assure the hon. Gentleman that, in this Minister, there is someone who is interested in this agenda. That is why I set up the distributed energy contact group, which involves all the key players on combined heat and power and decentralised energy. I want to embed that in policy thinking at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, not just in response to one idea, but building on the success of our microgeneration strategy last week, for example, when we had terrific buy-in from stakeholders throughout the sector. I want to build that now and ensure that decentralised energy is right at the heart of thinking in the Department, which—let us be honest—in the past has tended to gravitate to larger-scale energy solutions. We all know that; it is not a secret.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it will be a challenge to decarbonise heat and electricity in homes. It is a big challenge that we will have to tackle on a number of fronts. There is no silver bullet that will allow us to do that. A lot of attention is on the solar PV industry, which takes a significant amount of subsidy—more than 90% of the feed-in tariff budget. The hon. Gentleman knows that it is an attractive technology. The way that it is going, from being the most expensive technology, is exciting. Rapidly falling costs mean that it could reach grid parity, potentially, even within this Parliament at larger scale and, certainly, for the consumer within the decade, and could be cost-competitive with other large-scale renewables within a year or two. The price falls are exciting. However, it is not the only technology out there.

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