Heat and energy efficiency in buildings

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) commissioned Element Energy and UCL to carry out research on the distribution and characteristics of homes considered ‘hard to decarbonise’, with a view to developing treatment packages for decarbonisation of the existing UK housing stock and informing the CCC’s advice on the date for a net-zero emissions target in the UK.

Low-carbon heating is amongst the toughest challenges facing climate policy. Mike Hemsley, Senior Power Analyst at the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), summarises new insights on achieving near-zero emissions by 2050 from heating the UK’s buildings.

I am delighted that the Committee will be returning to Scotland later this week to hold another meeting in Edinburgh. It comes at an exciting time for Scottish climate action, writes CCC Chairman, Lord Deben.

In this report the Committee sets out four key messages to Government to put emissions reductions on track, based on the lessons of the last decade.

Ten years after the Climate Change Act came into force, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says the Government must learn the lessons of the last decade if it is to meet legally-binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the 2020s and 2030s. Unless action is taken now, the public faces an unnecessarily expensive […]

This report accompanies the CCC's 2018 Progress Report to Parliament. It was written by Imperial College London. It evaluates the technical feasibility and overall system costs of alternative heat decarbonisation pathways.

The Government has announced it intends to halve the energy use of new buildings in the UK by 2030, as one of the ‘Grand Challenge missions’ of its Industrial Strategy. The chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben, has welcomed the announcement, and highlighted the importance of tougher building standards and effective enforcement of those standards.

This letter is from Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, to Paul Wheelhouse MSP, Lesley Griffiths AM and Noel Lavery. It contains the Committee's latest advice on the impact of the Business Energy Tax Review and the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.

The Government’s Clean Growth Strategy, required under the Climate Change Act, sets out the next steps to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change. Although ambitious, the Strategy does not go far enough. Urgent action is needed to flesh out current plans and proposals, and supplement them with additional measures, to meet […]

This report provides the Committee on Climate Change’s independent assessment of the UK Government's Clean Growth Strategy.