Future Homes Standard passes another major milestone
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Future Homes Standard passes another major milestone
This week, the much-anticipated consultation for the Future Homes Standard finally closed. This is a major milestone in the UK’s transition to decarbonising the built environment and firmly establishing sustainable heat and hot water into Britain’s future buildings.
The Future Homes Standard is the Government’s much-anticipated new building regulations which will effectively ban any form of fossil fuel heat and hot water from the vast majority of new homes from 2025. Homes constructed after this date will be required to meet "net zero ready" criteria.
These proposals hold critical significance for the growth of the heat network and heat pump market, as they provide developers with some much-needed certainty regarding the direction of the housing sector’s transition to net zero, and solidify electrification as the preferred solution for decarbonisation of heat. This, in turn, will facilitate the necessary development of skills and green jobs needed to meet the expected increase in demand for heat pumps and heat networks whilst also significantly encouraging investment into the clean heat sector.
It's difficult to overstate these plans' significance for the sector. With more than 200,000 new homes being built every year, and the figure is set to increase under an anticipated Labour-led Government, the market for clean heat technology, specifically for heat pumps and heat networks, will increase dramatically.
Housing projects will now prioritise clean heat solutions that offer the best value for developers and future homeowners. Our innovative business model, which provides a networked ground source heat pump for the price of an air source heat pump, with long-term security to homeowners, is strongly positioned to benefit from the new regulations. No matter the shape or size of the project, developers want solutions that offer the best low-carbon technology for the lowest capital cost in their development. Our recently announced partnership with Welborne Garden Village, which will create 6,000 new homes, is a perfect example of this in action now, and with the Future HomeStandard in place from 2025, we are increasingly optimistic about delivering the £150m pipeline recently announced.
The government now must work quickly to process responses from the industry to refine their proposals further, including Rendesco’s recommendation that any new regulations should prominently recognise other low carbon heat solutions, including ground source heat networks, and not solely focus on air source heat pumps, which are not as cost or carbon efficient in comparison to our funded offer.
It’s been a long journey, but we’ll soon be at a point where electrified heat will be as commonplace as gas.