The Conservatives have made scrapping the Future Homes Standard a central part of Kemi Badenoch’s plans before the next general election. If implemented, new homes could be built without requirements for solar panels, heat pumps and high-grade insulation, potentially leaving households with higher energy bills over many years.
The UK is estimated to need about 6 million new homes. Conservative figures put the added cost of low-carbon features at £30,000 for a new-build house, while other estimates cited in the debate put the construction-stage cost of heat pumps, solar panels, batteries and insulation at about £5,000 to £8,000. Those measures were estimated to save more than £1,300 a year on energy bills, while retrofitting them after construction could cost more than £20,000.
Jan Rosenow, a climate and energy policy professor at the University of Oxford, said homes built with fossil-fuel systems could become a liability for occupants and create uncertainty for investors and suppliers. Simon McWhirter of the UK Green Building Council said housebuilders had already invested in skills, supply chains and products for the standard, making a reversal likely to disrupt preparations. The Conservatives have also proposed abolishing the Environment Agency and Natural England as part of a wider deregulation programme.
The Green party took a different direction at its conference by ending its longstanding opposition to nuclear power. It still prioritises renewable energy, but its MPs can now support new nuclear reactors because of their potential role in low-carbon electricity generation. The change came as the party competed with Labour in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, where Sagal Abdi-Wali won for Labour while the Greens increased their share of the vote.
At Labour’s conference, Andy Burnham announced a publicly owned body to invest in the energy grid alongside National Grid and a community fund to plant 500,000 trees across England. Climate policy received limited attention in his conference programme, while decisions on the Rosebank and Jackdaw North Sea drilling sites were postponed for the byelection. Greenpeace’s Ami McCarthy said Labour would be judged on whether it delivered its plans and rejected new fossil-fuel development, while Friends of the Earth campaigner Rosie Downes called for government promises to be turned into action after a summer of record heat and drought.