June 5, 2025 Net Zero
To call the Net Zero project controversial would be to downplay the divisiveness and toxicity of the debate. Aside from carbon emissions themselves, climate politics is harming the environment more than anything else is.
The current government is publicly committed to the 2050 Net Zero target but also unclear about how it intends to achieve it. So much so that the Energy Secretary has not only faced criticism from political opponents (like Nigel Farage and leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, who declared the 2050 Net Zero target ‘impossible’), but he also is under attack from his own ‘side’:
- Sharon Graham, General Secretary of Labour-affiliated union Unite, criticised the lack of investment in Net Zero
- Former Labour leader and former Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested Net Zero policies demand too much of the public, when their environmental impact is ‘minimal’
- Labour MP and leader of the Environmental Audit Committee Toby Perkins, has demanded detail on the Net Zero strategy
The government inherited a Net Zero goal without a strategy and has so far failed to fill in the policy gap.
One legacy of previous administrations is a green heat subsidy scheme that not only targets the wrong area but also underperforms in the process. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) is designed for domestic heating and does not give equal treatment to the diverse heating technologies required to decarbonise heating effectively.
As 37% of the UK’s emissions are directly related to heating, and different renewable solutions are effective in different contexts, it is imperative that
- the government takes a realistic and technology-agnostic approach to decarbonising heat
- support concentrates first on commercial and industrial heat
Here is a better approach to make the 2050 Net Zero target achievable.
Reforming the current subsidy for heat decarbonisation
The criteria of the BUS make it inaccessible for almost all businesses, and it gives preferential treatment to heat pumps over biomass boilers, with £7,500 available towards the former, and £5,000 for the latter. The publicity for the scheme is also focuses almost exclusively on heat-pumps, as does the schemes target of 600,000 heat pump installations by 2028.
While heat pumps are a vital component of UK heating decarbonisation, they are not the only one:
- Because of the low flow temperature of heat pumps, they are only truly effective in well insulated properties with large surface areas for radiation, such as underfloor heating. They are perfect in those conditions, but many buildings do not have those conditions.
- Older houses and buildings would be difficult to insulate economically, or impossible to insulate at all, and would require an entirely new heating system at great expense. Heat pumps are not viable solutions for such buildings.
- Large industrial, commercial, or agricultural premises require a lot of power in order to heat (even without considering insulation challenges), and heat pumps cannot provide that power.
Additionally, the BUS is failing to deliver the domestic installations it is intended to. By March 2025, the scheme had paid out vouchers for 49,136 heat pump installations (DESNZ). That is three years into the scheme, so in order to hit the target, there would have to be over 550,000 installations over the next three years — an 11x increase in uptake over the same length of time.
Whether the scheme is not generous or publicised enough, or whether the public is just not sufficiently interested, the domestic focus for the transition green heat has not so far been successful. Neither is it the right emphasis in the first place. The government should be focusing its efforts on future-proofing business heat. Here is why.
Why the government should prioritise businesses in its support for green heat
The question that the authorities perhaps should ask is, ‘Who has more responsibility for decarbonising the UK? A steelwork, or a two-bed terrace?’ It is intuitively more urgent to decarbonise energy-intense industries and heavy consumers of power than small domestic buildings.
Blair’s objection to the Net Zero focus does hit on an important point — the public does not necessarily feel incentivised to pursue disruptive and potentially expensive replacements of heating systems, nor do they feel a responsibility to decarbonise. They have plenty of personal and professional obligations and pressures and are aware that on an individual or a family level, their impact is negligible. Businesses, however, are more likely to find motivations to go green:
- They have ESG goals, either mandated by law or their own strategy
- They may work with sectors in which partners look for environmentally conscious suppliers
- Their heavy use of power means an urgent need for lower-cost, more stably priced heating fuel
The now-closed Non-Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (NDRHI) proved that businesses would eagerly join a decarbonisation incentive scheme that made commercial sense to them.
As it goes, the NDRHI itself was a poorly-designed scheme that encouraged unscrupulous ‘engineers’ to hard-sell sub-par boilers and install them poorly and in a hurry. However, a better (and less expensive) approach would be to fund installations of green heating solutions for businesses. That is a one-off expense per business, rather than a 20-year commitment to pay for each kWh of heat, as the NDRHI was.
A scheme like that would help business who already want to decarbonise, by handling the capital investment for the new heating system, which some businesses cannot afford, or may feel hesitant to commit.
Businesses like Innasol and bodies like the REA continue to call for pragmatic, technology-agnostic policies towards Net Zero, and robust support for business decarbonisation as a vital component of that transition.
For more of our thoughts on policy, climate politics, and decarbonisation, you can read our blog. Or, to discuss the best approach to future-proofing your energy, please call 01621 892613 to speak to a renewable energy expert who can advise on the heat or power solution for your premises.
