Chapter Summary

This document addresses four key objectives: helping people reduce energy bills by using less energy; reducing the UK’s emissions in line with our carbon budgets and our target to reduce emissions by 80% in 2050; maintaining secure and diverse energy supplies; and allowing the UK to make the most of the economic opportunities presented by the shift to a low carbon economy. This document focuses on reducing emissions from the existing building stock, primarily people’s homes. Households account for over a quarter of the UK’s CO₂ emissions.

We have already achieved a great deal and put in place a wide range of policies to promote energy savings and low carbon energy. However, if the UK is to achieve its targets on emissions reductions and renewable energy, we will have to move beyond relatively inexpensive and easy energy efficiency measures and consider more radical ways of saving energy. We will also need to ‘decarbonise’ the generation and supply of heat. To achieve its aims, the Government recognises the need to enable people and communities to play a greater role.

By 2050, emissions from buildings need to be minimal if we are to reduce the UK’s overall emissions by 80%. To reach this point, we need to raise our ambition. Our proposal is that, by 2015, all lofts and cavity walls should be insulated, where it is practical to do so. By 2020, we want seven million homes to have had the opportunity to take up a ‘whole-house’ package of measures going beyond simple insulation. By 2030, our aim is that all buildings will have received such a package, that covers all of the cost-effective measures available for that property at the time.

This chapter sets out the challenges we will have to overcome to meet these ambitions, and our broad approach for doing so. We invite your views both on the level of our ambition and our strategy for achieving it.