The Upfront Cost of Decarbonising Your Home

The objective of this report is to analyse the upfront capital costs facing consumers when considering the installation of new low carbon heating technology solutions for their homes today, including the cost of any associated home upgrades that will likely be required. The UK Government have recently published its Heat and Buildings Strategy which sets out plans to significantly cut carbon emissions from the existing housing stock and new homes. Whilst the Strategy points to a future role for a variety of technologies such as heat pumps, hydrogen, and heat networks, the success of this Strategy will largely be determined by the ability to achieve installed cost reductions for heat pumps of at least 25-50% by 2025, with the view to achieving cost parity with a gas boiler by 2030. The purpose of this report is to launch a series which tracks the  upfront costs of these respective technologies over time to establish whether the cost reduction targets mooted by government and heat pump stakeholders are being delivered, and the implications this has on our ability to decarbonise the UK housing stock.