A fair deal for rural homes: give families practical choices for lower-carbon heating
Duncan Carter, Corporate Affairs Manager
| Calor Gas
The Warm Homes Plan can cut emissions without forcing every household down the same path. Duncan Carter of Calor argues that ministers should back solutions that work for Britain’s diverse rural homes – including renewable liquid gases and hybrid heating.
The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee’s inquiry into warm and comfortable homes comes at a decisive moment. The government now has an opportunity to ensure its Warm Homes Plan works not only for homes that can readily electrify, but also for the rural households too often treated as an afterthought.
The ambition is right: warmer homes, lower bills and lower emissions. But a credible national plan must start from a basic reality. Britain’s homes are not all the same, so the route to decarbonising them cannot be the same either.
That matters for the 1.4m predominantly rural homes beyond the gas grid. Many are older, larger and harder to retrofit than urban properties. For some households, installing and running an air source heat pump can also involve significant additional cost. A policy that assumes full electrification is suitable everywhere risks leaving these families facing higher costs, disruption or delay.
Heat pumps will be the right choice for many homes and should remain central to the transition. But government has already acknowledged that some properties may need alternative clean heating solutions. The fair and pragmatic response is therefore a technology-neutral framework: set ambitious outcomes, protect consumers and allow households to use the credible lower-carbon option best suited to their property and circumstances.
Renewable liquid gases such as BioLPG must be part of that framework.
Witchampton Mill in Dorset shows why. All 16 homes in this off-grid community have moved their heating supply to a 100 per cent BioLPG tariff.
Residents did not need to replace their boilers, tanks or heating infrastructure. Yet the collective switch is expected to save approximately 79 tonnes of carbon emissions each year, as BioLPG delivers up to 84 per cent lower carbon emissions than conventional LPG. For households, that means a material emissions reduction without the cost and disruption of replacing an entire heating system.
This is more than a local success story. It demonstrates a principle ministers should build into national policy: electrification should not be seen as a silver bullet and where existing assets can lower emissions quickly and efficiently, they should be used.
The next phase of the Warm Homes Plan should turn that principle into policy. Government should explicitly recognise renewable liquid gases within its heat strategy and provide a clear route for alternative clean heating solutions. The most effective step would be a Renewable Heating Fuel Obligation: a long-term, subsidy-free mechanism that progressively increases the renewable content of heating fuels, following the approach already used in. This would be similar to existing mechanisms for road transport and aviation. A predictable demand signal unlocks investment in UK renewable liquid fuel supply, supports domestic jobs and reduces emissions from homes that cannot easily or affordably fully electrify. It would complement the rollout of heat pumps, not compete with it.
Ministers should also support hybrid heat pumps. For suitable properties, combining electrification with renewable liquid fuel can cut emissions while retaining resilience during the coldest periods. It can also help manage peak winter electricity grid demand as pressure on the grid increases.
The forthcoming Warm Homes Agency will be critical to delivery. Its guidance and assessment tools should reflect the diversity of Britain’s housing stock, present households with all suitable low-carbon options and avoid steering consumers towards a single technology regardless of cost or practicality.
Industry is ready to play its part. Calor forecasts that more than 170m litres of renewable liquid gases could be available by 2030 – enough potentially to decarbonise more than 17 per cent of domestic and commercial LPG supply. What is needed now is the policy certainty to bring forward supply and give consumers confidence.
Witchampton Mill is a small Dorset community, but its lesson is national. Successful decarbonisation should be judged by the emissions removed, the affordability of the transition and the number of households brought with us – not by whether every home adopts the same technology.
The government should now make three commitments: recognise renewable liquid gases in the Warm Homes Plan, consult on a Renewable Heating Fuel Obligation and ensure hybrid systems receive fair treatment in policy and consumer advice. Do that, and rural households can become active participants in the transition rather making them pay the price for a government strategy that is designed around different housing stock.
