Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 20TH - 26TH MARCH 2020 | 13 Policy & Regulation consist of grants to support the installation of heat pumps and biomass boilers by house- holds and small businesses, and will be backed by £100m of new Exchequer funding. While low-carbon heating grants from 2022 are good news, the fund is limited, says Bean Beanland, president of the Ground Source Heat Pump Association. He points out that £100m will be sufficient to support the installation of only around 45,000 heat pumps given a subsidy of ten per cent for each device. "It's nothing like enough," he says, "and it's just not going to get us where we need to be." Black says the CCC's projections about the number of heat pumps that will be required if the UK is to meet its net-zero target make clear the need for much more financial sup- port. "The CCC is talking about installing a million heat pumps per annum in five years: that's a hell of a ramp up," he says. Hydrogen, the main alternative to the electrification of heat, should be focused on providing very high temperature heating for industrial premises rather than homes, according to Beanland. "We aren't well suited to giving you 500 degrees, but we are well suited to giving you 21 degrees in a building," he explains. "It should be about the course for the horse. We are going to need all of these technologies, including hydrogen. Energy efficiency Meanwhile, the Budget did not spare a penny for energy efficiency, despite the Tory mani- festo pledge that such measures will attract £9.2bn worth of investment during the cur- rent Parliament. Hewett describes the "lack of any mean- ingful policy on energy efficiency" as "par- ticularly disappointing". Some experts, though, give the govern- ment the benefit of the doubt on this score, pointing to the heat roadmap that the gov- ernment has said it will be publishing by the summer. The roadmap will create a further opportunity for the government to outline measures on heat and energy efficiency. Jeffery adds that this is one of a number of announcements due in the coming months, including the NIS, the perennially delayed energy white paper and the transport decar- bonisation plan. But this also means that the white paper, already getting on for a year overdue as a result of Brexit and ministerial reshuffle- related delays, needs to contain a detailed framework when it is finally published. Markall says: "There is now more pressure on the government to deliver on the NIS and the energy white paper. The decisions we make in the coming years will decide what we do up to 2030 and beyond." An Energy Networks Association spokes- person says: "It's great that the government has announced funding on this scale for EV charge points and CCS, but it needs to be backed up in the white paper by key deci- sions around infrastructure investment and sending the right signals to the regulator to ensure our members can deliver that." However while the climate emergency remains an existential threat, even the Extinction Rebellion movement has called off its protests for the time being One energy source says that the decar- bonisation challenge feels "quite trivial com- pared to what the world currently facing". Officials at the BEIS (department for business, energy and industrial strategy) are understandably focused on keeping the economy afloat as coronavirus threatens to force a mass of businesses to close their doors. Utility Week sources, who have been in touch with officials at BEIS, are gloomy about the prospects of the white paper being published before the autumn. Markall says: "We need infrastructure strategy and the energy white paper to come forward, but at the moment the priority turns to Covid-19." David Blackman, policy correspondent, Utility Week New chancellor Rishi Sunak delivers his first Budget

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