This week in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee, Richard questioned experts in the energy sector for their views on the Government’s recently unveiled Heat and Buildings Strategy. The strategy sets out plans to decarbonise the way homes are heated, as part of the country’s transition to net zero by 2050. It is anticipated this will involve replacing huge numbers of gas boilers with alternatives such as ground source heat pumps and hydrogen boilers, as well as investment in insulation.
Richard Fuller, MP for North East Bedfordshire and member of the BEIS Select Committee, said:
After attending COP26 in Glasgow and visiting local schools to hear the ideas that pupils had for achieving Net Zero over the past few weeks, I was keen to get stuck in to my role as member of the Business and Energy Select Committee to ensure we are making practical progress with Decarbonising Home Heat.
Part of achieving practical progress, and for getting wide support from people, is to be transparent that some of these changes may require higher taxes and taxpayer funding for technologies that are still to prove themselves. Ideological commitment to Net Zero is all well and good, but we need to make intelligent choices that limit costs to taxpayers and ideally create export opportunities for British businesses as we lead the charge to Net Zero.
I was not sure that I got this message across effectively to the witnesses at the select committee but otherwise they provided good support for the ambitions of the government’s recently released Heat and Buildings Strategy.
The full exchange with the witnesses can be watched here. The government's Heat and Building Strategy can be read here.
