Louise’s Summary of the Climate Change Committee

Every year the Climate Change Committee (CCC) report on the UK’s progress towards its decarbonisation targets.

Verdict on heating decarbonisation in 2025

The report is blunt: home heating decarbonisation is falling behind, and 2025 was a year of poor performance. 

Buildings emissions fell slightly, but the Climate Change Committee explains that this was due to high energy prices suppressing demand for heating, not progress in switching to low-carbon heat.

I guess there are two factors at play here; a mild winter and people ‘rationing’ their heating due to high fuel prices.

The financial case in favour of speeding up decarbonisation of heating is framed starkly: since the Iran-war energy shock, a typical gas-boiler/petrol-car household’s bills have risen 4x more than an EV/heat-pump households’ (10x for a rural oil-boiler/diesel-car household).

The Climate Change Committee argues faster electrification would cut household bills, ease inflation, and save the UK £8bn in oil/gas costs by 2030 — tying heat pump rollout directly to energy security and cost-of-living arguments, not just climate targets.

Key statistics

• Less than 2% of UK homes are heated by a heat pump — probably the lowest percentage in Europe.
• Number of installations in 2025 — around 52,000 heat pumps were installed in existing homes (retrofit), an increase of only 7% on 2024, the previous year showed 56% growth.
• To put this figure in context: the Warm Homes Plan aims for 450,000 installations/year by 2030 (250,000 of these retrofits). The CCC says actual installation rates will need to be higher than this to hit the emission reduction targets.
• Conclusion: target likely to be missed on current trends — the required growth rate is far above what was achieved in 2025, though it was noted that higher growth rates have been achieved in (2023–24) and are being achieved in other European markets, so it’s not judged impossible.
• Emissions impact so far: current heat pump deployment is “not yet fast enough to meaningfully reduce emissions” — only around 0.1 MtCO2e of savings in 2025.

Why it’s going wrong

1. Closure of the ECO scheme — this accounted for approximately one third of retrofit heat pump installations over the last three years, targeted at low-income households. Its closure, no replacement scheme in place, is identified as the direct cause of the 2025 slowdown. This creates the risks of a further fall in installations this year. It is important to note that many of these installations were not energy efficient but did switch the householder from fossil fuel to electricity
2. Electricity is too expensive relative to gas — this remains “a major barrier,” despite some policy costs being shifted off electricity bills in the 2025 Budget.
3. Public/commercial buildings gap — the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme has closed with no replacement funding, and there’s no plan to tackle the electricity-to-gas price ratio for non-residential users.

Bright spots

• Future Homes Standard: new regulations (from 2027, after a 12-month transition) will require all new homes/buildings in England and Wales to have low-carbon heating — ending new-build gas boiler installations.
• Warm Homes Plan: has increased support for solar + heat pumps; combined with battery storage and time-of-use tariffs, this can already make a heat pump cheaper to run than a gas boiler for a typical household.

Conclusions / solutions proposed

The CCC’s core solution is to accelerate heat pump installs beyond current government plans, via:

• Make electricity cheaper — strip remaining policy costs off electricity bills for households and businesses so heat pumps’ efficiency advantage translates into lower bills.
• Urgently plug the ECO 4 scheme gap — replace lost low-income retrofit support before installations fall further behind.
• Make heat pumps the “default choice” by 2035 — by cutting red tape, closing skills gaps, improving consumer advice, and encouraging market conditions that lower installation costs.
• Fund public-sector decarbonisation — a new scheme to replace the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, potentially restricting new fossil-fuel boilers in public buildings.

Overall message: the 2030 climate target (NDC) is still reachable, but only with urgent policy action this year — heat pumps are one of the specific areas where the current government trajectory is judged not ambitious enough.