The Government recognises that policy costs fall disproportionately on electricity bills and are taking forward work to ensure that prices reflect the cheaper wholesale price of clean energy.

On the distribution of costs between electricity and gas, the Government acted at the Autumn Budget to cut electricity costs in a way that makes this distribution fairer. We ended funding for the Energy Company Obligation scheme, as well as removing 75% of costs for the Renewables Obligation scheme from people’s energy bills.

The government also announced in April plans to go further and faster on delinking electricity and gas prices. We will consult later this year on arrangements to offer existing generators a fixed price Contract for Difference for the electricity they generate. In addition, the rate of the Electricity Generator Levy has been increased by 10% to respond to the high prices that generators are benefitting from due to the crisis in the Middle East.

Machine learning is not currently used for electricity grid management. Any future energy required will depend on how machine learning will be used.

The UK Government contracted Europe Economics to research whether future electricity demand from AI data centres will add to overall UK energy demand, or whether it will replace electricity currently used elsewhere in the economy (Europe Economics study). We have also recently procured a follow-up study in order to extend the methodology from the Europe Economics work to further 10 use cases.

The government recognises the essential role that local places play in accelerating progress towards net zero and is committed to working in partnership with Local Authorities and Mayoral Strategic Authorities to deliver the Warm Homes Plan through an area-based approach. This includes looking at examples of best practice of localised and community models delivering homes decarbonisation at the scale needed to make more comfortable homes and bring down bills for more people.

The government is committed to delivering the Warm Homes Plan at pace. We will carefully consider responses to consultations relevant to the Plan and will implement policy changes in line with legislative and delivery timetables.

Tackling fuel poverty is a priority for this Government. Through the 2026 Fuel Poverty Strategy for England and the Warm Homes Plan, we are taking action to accelerate progress, with an ambition to lift up to 1 million households out of fuel poverty by 2030. This will be achieved through new regulations in the rental sector as well as £5 billion of support from the Warm Homes Plan for low-income households and the expanded Warm Home Discount.

The Fuel Poverty Strategy acknowledged that sustained action beyond 2030 will be required to tackle fuel poverty and committed to consulting on a new fuel poverty target to succeed the 2030 target.

The Government is committed to delivering the Warm Homes Plan at pace while providing clarity and a stable pipeline for industry. We are working across energy efficiency and retrofit policy to support timely decisions on scheme design, mobilisation, and implementation. This includes considering workforce capacity, skills, and supply chain impacts as part of scheme development. We are also working with the TUC through the Warm Homes Plan Workforce Taskforce to support jobs and skills across the sector. We will continue to engage with delivery partners and industry to support investment and minimise disruption between programmes.

The Warm Homes: Local Grant scheme provides grant funding to local authorities to deliver energy performance upgrades and low carbon heating to low-income privately owned homes in England below EPC Band C. This includes homes both on and off the gas grid.

The scheme is locally administered and delivered by local authorities. They provide oversight of upgrades in their area, ensuring high quality and monitoring compliance with the required rules and standards of the scheme.

There are no current plans to allow a direct to installer route.

The Government recognises the pressure that rising energy prices place on households. We already use data from multiple sources including HMRC and DWP to identify households eligible for the Warm Home Discount, enabling most rebates to be paid automatically. However, many fuel poor households cannot currently be identified through existing data-matching arrangements.

The Government earlier this year launched a National Data Library 'kickstarter' project to explore whether securely connecting public sector data can make it easier to identify households in need, to ensure support reaches the people it’s designed for faster.

The Taskforce on the National Security and Resilience Risks of a Changing Climate and Nature Loss will meet for the first time in the Autumn. A record of that meeting will not be published to allow for open and candid discussion among participants. The public will be kept informed of the Taskforce’s progress and outputs, and we will set out our approach to this in due course.

The government is reforming Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to ensure they provide a more complete assessment of a home's energy performance. We will introduce four headline metrics for domestic EPCs: Fabric Performance, Heating System, Smart Readiness and Energy Cost.

Moving from a single headline metric to a suite of complementary metrics will allow government schemes to choose the metrics most relevant to their objectives when determining eligibility and targeting support. The government is considering the interaction between reformed EPCs and government-funded energy efficiency and low-carbon heating schemes as part of the development of both future schemes and EPC reforms.

Ofgem’s Guaranteed Standards of Performance (GSOP) framework outlines the minimum levels of performance consumers can expect from suppliers, with automatic compensation provided if these standards are not met. The level of GSOP payments was recently increased in 2025 from £30 to £40 to account for inflation since the £30 payment level was set in 2015.

Ofgem is currently reviewing the GSOP framework to assess their adequacy in line with a wider consultation on consumer outcomes, launched on 23 June.

In addition, on 17 June 2026, the Government published its consultation response outlining measures that will be taken to strengthen the powers of the Energy Ombudsman to ensure consumers receive fairer and faster redress where they have not been able to resolve a dispute with their supplier.

The latest sub-regional fuel poverty data were published in May 2026, these estimated the level of fuel poverty in 2024, under the Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) metric. The Birmingham Local Authority had an estimated fuel poverty rate of 13.8% (60,832 households) in 2024, which is higher than the overall fuel poverty rate in England of 9.9%.

DESNZ leads the UK’s engagement with UNIDO and is responding as the policy lead. My Rt hon Friend the Secretary of State has not held any recent formal meetings with UNIDO, but DESNZ officials have held multiple meetings with UNIDO officials, particularly in relation to the UK's accession to UNIDO, DESNZ-led International Climate Finance programmes, country partnerships and coordinated international action on green industrial transitions.

When replacing a fossil fuel heating system with a heat pump or other low carbon technology, the expectation and rules for waste disposal are the same as like-for-like replacements.

Guidance for the disposal of appliances varies by product categorisation. Advice on waste management can be found on gov.uk.

When replacing a fossil fuel heating system with a heat pump or other low carbon technology, the expectation and rules for waste disposal are the same as like-for-like replacements.

Guidance for the disposal of appliances varies by product categorisation. Advice on waste management can be found on gov.uk.

As set out in the Warm Homes Plan, our buildings are not currently built to deal with record summer temperatures and some are at significant risk of overheating.

That’s why the government is introducing the most appropriate, cost-effective passive cooling measures into our capital schemes, which will deliver £4.4 billion in direct grants by 2030 to support low-income households. These include internal blinds, external shutters, reflective window films, and cooler building materials.

We also recognise that in some cases active cooling is needed to protect those most vulnerable to overheating. We have therefore expanded the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which provides grants of up to £7,500 for low‑carbon heating and is worth £2.7 billion up to 2030, to provide grants for air‑to‑air heat pumps which also provide cooling.

Additionally, the WHP committed to a new low-interest consumer loans scheme – backed by £2bn public funding – which will provide further support with upfront costs for various home upgrades. We will provide more details on this soon.

The Government is taking significant steps to make heat pumps more accessible and affordable for homeowners, demonstrated by the record installation levels set in both 2024 and 2025.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) provides grants of up to £7,500 for all eligible households in England and Wales, and we recently announced a £1,500 uplift for properties heated by oil and LPG. We recently expanded scheme eligibility to include air-to-air heat pumps, which are generally cheaper to install.

The Warm Homes: Local Grant and the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund also provide fully-funded heat pumps to low-income households,

The Warm Homes Plan committed to a new low-interest consumer loans scheme – backed by £2bn public funding – which will provide further support with upfront costs. We will provide more details soon.

The Government has reformed planning rules to make it easier to install heat pumps under permitted rights, and we’re working with industry to reduce costs, which have fallen by around 11% in real terms since BUS launched in 2022.

Based on analysis of Non-Domestic National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework 2025, we estimate that approximately 93% of non-domestic buildings have a floor area of less than or equal to 1,000 square meters. The non-domestic PRS MEES Impact Assessment will be published in due course.

Park homes are eligible for support under the Warm Homes: Local Grant - provided they are:

• The permanent residence of the household;
• Assessed as equivalent to an EPC band D–G home; and
• Are expected to remain in place for the duration of the relevant measure guarantee period.

As park homes do not have Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), eligibility is determined through an assessment of their Energy Performance Rating (EPR), which can evidence equivalence to the required EPC bands.

The Government has therefore ensured that park home residents can access support where they meet the scheme's eligibility criteria.

Energy suppliers are now able to install smart meters in the ‘North’ region using the 4G cellular mobile network, with 4G communication hubs available for rollout across Great Britain since July 2025.

4G operates alongside the existing long range radio solution in the North, giving energy suppliers an additional option for connectivity and improving installation success rates.

The Department does not collect data on smart meter installations at a constituency level. The latest statistics are available here: Smart meter statistics - GOV.UK