The government has targeted making heat pumps the standard way of heating a property from 2025, after it published a consultation on the Future Homes Standard.
The document said fossil fuel boilers, hydrogen heating systems and hydrogen solutions were incompatible with creating ‘zero-carbon ready homes’.
The consultation will run until 6 March 2024.
The government said: “Heat networks can be highly efficient ways of delivering heat because the heat pumps on the network can be paired with thermal stores allowing the heat to be produced at times of low-cost, low-carbon electricity; such function also reduces peak demand on the local electricity grid.
“The heat pumps in heat networks often have a higher seasonal coefficient of performance and can be run to optimise their coefficient of performance. A concurrent notional building is being proposed to set the standard for new heat networks.”
Tamsin Lishman, chief executive of heat pump supplier The Kensa Group, said: “The publication of proposals requiring all new homes to be low-cost, low-carbon and energy efficient to run is a major step forward for the decarbonisation of homes and heat.
“This new standard will boost heat pump installations drastically, expanding the market from 50,000 to over 250,000 almost overnight, providing companies like Kensa with the confidence to go ahead and invest heavily in new manufacturing facilities and the continued development of our supply chains.
“It is particularly important that these proposals intend to make heat pumps and low-carbon heat networks the default options for heat in new homes, effectively banning new gas grid connections and so-called hydrogen-ready boilers from installation.
“Allowing these technologies to continue to be installed in new homes would simply have maintained confusion about the future of home heating and short-changed hundreds of thousands of new home buyers who would have inevitably had to replace their fossil fuel heating system in the years to come.”
