BEAMA has submitted a comprehensive response to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's Alternative Clean Heat Solutions consultation. Our key takeaways and position are very clear and always have been:
- Consumer choice is essential on the pathway to heat electrification, and Government needs to urgently introduce equitable treatment of ALL storage related technologies across ALL policy instruments and normalise heat electrification via MCS, fiscal incentives and advice linked to the forthcoming Warm Homes Agency.
- The assumed archetypes for technologies such as high heat retention storage heating, amongst others, demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of how heat is deployed across housing and customer segments which is concerning but we have explained the principle many times in recent years.
- Government really needs to better understand the concept of whole house heating with mixed systems. Too often the vision of heat deployment is based on the old 'central heating' premise of a single central appliance but that is NOT how heat electrification works in the round... a whole house system is as much about control of a variety of technologies as anything else.
- There is a real concern around the prospect of replacing potentially critical energy infrastructure flex technologies with air to air heat pumps which could result in missing the 12GW flex target, and eroding the 6.4GW opportunity for storage replacement. How does this fit with SSES when Government is trying to encourage manufacturers to be flex ready... for what addressable market when Government is working against its own policy framework? There seems to be an institutional blind spot here with Government but despite this being a consultation, that decision was made long, long ago.
Overall, there is much work to be done in a very short timeframe if we are to avoid a high level of heat electrification market distortion in the Warm Homes and BUS framework. We await next steps with interest, and remain ready for constructive discussion around policy gaps and broken linkages.