Green boiler switch: Britons to save £2.3bn after major commitment from UK manufacturers
BRITONS are set to save £2.3billion in a move to go green after the UK's "Big Four" manufacturers promised hydrogen-ready boilers at no extra cost to the consumer, Express.co.uk can exclusively reveal.
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Worcester Bosch, Vaillant, Baxi and Ideal have all agreed on a prise-promise that will not cost any more to install than a natural gas equivalent boiler. The Climate Change Committee, which published its sixth carbon budget in December, warned that a hydrogen boiler replacement would cost the consumer £100 more per appliance than a natural gas boiler. But this new price guarantee could actually save the UK around £2.3 billion as there are 23 million gas boilers in British homes.
Mike Foster, Chief Executive of the boiler industry’s trade association, the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA) who brokered the deal, told Express.co.uk: “£2.3billion is a sizeable sum and it doesn’t have to come out of the consumer’s pockets anymore.
“This will help us get to net zero at the lowest cost and lowest level of disruption.”
The Heat and Building Strategy is due to be published next month to set out how the Government plans to address potential issues for homeowners such as electricity being significantly more expensive than gas.
That “price distortion” is seen as a barrier to helping promote low-carbon solutions, such as hydrogen boilers and heat pumps in homes.
There are concerns among homeowners over the cost of going green.
Currently, a semi-detached or mid-terrace property costs about £600 a year to heat.
After subsidies the current cost of installing a heat pump would be between £7,000 and £8,000, bringing down bills to about £500 a year.
A hydrogen boiler would cost about £3,000 but hydrogen bills would be about £900 a year.
The EUA’s Too Close to Home report found that consumers view tackling climate change as a priority, but the majority of them are unwilling to pay more than the cost of a new boiler.
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Up to 59 percent of people responded in the survey to say that domestic heating and hot water should be a key focus in delivering our climate change objectives.
Mr Foster guaranteed that the hydrogen-ready boilers will be easy to install as the boilers are fitted to the same pipe network as natural gas boilers and are the exact same size.
He added: “There is no impact on the consumer, they do not have to do a thing and everything stays the same. All the engineers do is come along and change two parts and then your hydrogen boiler is ready for use.
“Blending hydrogen into the natural gas grid up to 20 percent, which has been tested successfully, can be rolled out relatively quickly and within the next two or three years we will see hydrogen injected into the gas grid.”
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And Mr Foster said that hydrogen can play a key role in decarbonising heat in Britain.
He continued: “This gives the government the option to start migrating people from natural gas, or natural gas with a blend of hydrogen, into full hydrogen.
“Our own research tells us that consumers want to do their bit to reduce the impact of their homes and help deliver a greener future, but are concerned about the cost of some low carbon technologies.
“This price-promise from the Big Four ensures that consumers will be able to access an affordable low carbon heat and hot water solution.
“This is another example of British companies leading the way on net zero.”