LONDON — Britain’s old and drafty houses pose a major climate headache. But, on current progress, fixing them is going to take a very, very long time indeed.
Ministers have ambitious plans to ramp up insulation in the U.K., as part of a long-term push to achieve net zero carbon emissions.
But it’s proving harder than it looks, and MPs and industry figures are sounding the alarm about a glaring gap between the plans and progress so far.
Provisional statistics released this month on the £1 billion Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS), a key vehicle for home energy efficiency, showed just 1,026 homes had benefited from new insulation measures since it launched six months ago.
But the government aims to upgrade 300,000 homes through this scheme alone by March 2026 — and climate-conscious MPs fear the plan seems off track. At the current rate of delivery, that means it’s going to take 146 years just to hit the goal, said climate change think tank E3G.
The government’s performance is “abysmal,” Green Party MP Caroline Lucas told POLITICO.
“These latest figures must be a wake-up call to the government. This scheme currently isn’t working at anywhere near the speed or scale required,” she added.
Alexander Stafford, a Conservative MP and a member of parliament’s energy security and net zero committee, said that the scheme was partly impacted because there were not enough “physical people” across the supply chain to meet demand for home upgrades.
The government is taking energy efficiency seriously, but it’s a “long battle,” Stafford added.
A fellow Tory MP on the committee, Mark Garnier, said the government’s “ambition on retrofit insulation is welcome” but admitted that, while he was confident the target will be met, it “may not be in the timescale” set out for 2026.
“Hopefully lessons will be learnt and the next round will be better rolled out,” he said.
Even the government’s independent climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee, sound skeptical. While they acknowledged that historically there are “slow starts” to schemes like these, “it’s still the case that a lot of work needs to be done.”
When POLITICO asked Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho about her department’s energy efficiency schemes in November, she said the government has pledged £6 billion for them between 2025 and 2028.
But this money is not ring-fenced for homes, and campaigners argue this is a mistake.
“There’s a big cliff edge in a couple of years’ time. And to train people, and make that big investment in people when you don’t know that there’s going to be that continuity of funding, is very difficult,” said Matt Copeland, head of policy and public affairs at the fuel poverty charity National Energy Action.
Copeland pointed to a “hard stop” 2026 deadline for two of the government’s flagship insulation schemes.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “Under the GBIS, we estimate more than 300,000 of Britain’s least energy efficient homes will be improved up to 2026, helping to heat homes and save families money on their bills.
“The scheme has already seen an increase in month-on-month uptake since it launched, with new systems and contracts in place.”