17:05 Matthew Pennycook (Labour)

Yet, taken in the round, there has been a tangible lack of progress when it comes to doing what is necessary to ensure that heat network customers are adequately protected. That should be a concern to each of us, but it should particularly concern the Government, not only because of their avowed aim to keep customer bills as low as possible, but because low levels of consumer confidence in heat networks, born of consistently poor service and expensive bills, will make it that much harder for the UK to decarbonise heat and reduce our overall greenhouse gas emissions.

In the time I have today, I do not intend to delve into the enormous challenge presented by the urgent need to decarbonise heat, and what more the Government must do to meet that challenge, not least because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) will do so with his customary rigour and incisiveness when he responds from the Front Bench. I do want to make the point that we will struggle as a country to take the public with us when making the case for the benefits of large-scale heat network deployment if we continue to put off addressing the systemic problems in the sector.

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17:10 Janet Daby (Labour)

This is not the first time that I have spoken in a Westminster Hall debate on district heat networks. Such technologies are important for bringing green energy into ordinary people’s homes and making Britain carbon-neutral as soon as possible. However, as we have heard, work needs to be done to ensure that district heat networks provide not only energy efficiency, but cost efficiency. District heating providers must be brought under the control not just of formal regulators, but of consumers.

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17:13 Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)

Looking at the big picture for heating overall, we face conflicting problems when it comes to heating our homes. For too many people, fuel poverty is an issue, yet 85% of our homes rely on methane gas heating—a system that is cheaper than electricity and, for the most part, clearly very convenient, given that a boiler can be activated at leisure. That is illustrated by the fact that until it was recently overtaken by China, the UK was the biggest market for gas boilers in the world, but we know that cannot continue. We need to decarbonise, and we need plans, strategies and funding to get there.

The 10-point plan also has targets for carbon capture and storage from hydrogen production. We are still awaiting strategies for them, but district heating is not even mentioned in the document. In fact, district heating has not featured significantly enough in debates to date, which means today’s debate is very welcome. Looking forward, the reality is that if we are to decarbonise, we will have a rise in some form of district heating in some cases.

so why does district heating lag behind in discussions and planning? It is quite clear that we need more of that. We need the heat and buildings decarbonisation strategy, as well as the Government’s net zero strategy. The Scottish Government published theirs in February 2021. If re-elected, the SNP pledged to decarbonise the heating of 1 million homes by 2030—over a third of the housing stock in Scotland—and all new homes and buildings from 2024 will use renewable or zero-emission heating. That is backed by a £1.6 billion investment plan.

Scotland is trying to reduce emissions and heating costs, and to fight fuel poverty. Compared with Westminster, we spend four times more per capita on energy efficiency, which is vital in reducing emissions. By contrast, the UK Government’s future homes standard involves eliminating the connection of new homes to the gas grid by 2025. That means that by 2024, something like 200,000 new homes will be connected to the gas grid and will then need retrofit measures in order to decarbonise at a later date.

We need to see greater investment in energy efficiency. What of the Tory manifesto’s £9.2 billion commitment? We need to see a coherent heat and building strategy that will deliver a suite of options. They will still need to include district heating, which the Committee on Climate Change reckons will account for 18% of heat in our homes going forward. That means ensuring a route to market for the capital cost and/or a Government funding plan.

As we look forward, there is plenty to be done. I look forward to the Minister’s response. With COP26 on the horizon, this should be our ideal platform to demonstrate a coherent, complementary heat decarbonisation strategy.

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17:20 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

I think district heating will be an important part of our approach to the decarbonisation of heating. It certainly has a substantial part to play, under particular circumstances and in particular areas, in delivering low carbon heat reliably and satisfactorily to populations. At its heart, it is a system about networks, not about what goes into the networks. A variety of different forms of fuel can go into the network and deliver heat very efficiently. It is not just about taking heat from incinerators. It has much wider applications through heat engines or through low-carbon sources of energy that can be a part of a network. The network can adapt and change over time.

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17:35 The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)

Heat networks play and will continue to play an important part in assisting us to meet our net zero challenge. They will unlock larger-scale renewable and recovered heat sources, both energy from waste heat and heat from rivers and mines. It was interesting to hear about the geothermal heat source being used in Southampton. When deployed effectively, they can bring greater heat efficiency than individual gas boilers, lower costs for consumers and support local regeneration. However, we recognise that we need to regulate the market to ensure that those outcomes are real, for which protections for heat network consumers are needed.

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