The decarbonisation of home heating should be a top government priority if the UK is to meet its climate goals, finds UK charity Nesta.

Its latest report – Delivering clean heat: a policy plan – highlights the UK’s need to make significant progress in how we heat our buildings and homes to meet future Carbon Budgets and the 2050 Net Zero target.

Home heating accounts for 18% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, and while the government is keen for us to switch from our current carbon-emitting heating systems to low-carbon alternatives such as heat pumps, progress has been very slow.

Only 18,900 heat pumps were installed between May 2022 and December 2023. Considering there are 25.5 million homes in the UK still relying on oil or gas boilers, there is much work to do to ramp up installations of low-carbon heating technologies.

According to Nesta’s findings, three million heat pumps and similar systems need to be installed over the lifetime of the current parliament – a 12-fold increase over the...