Wolseley sets out recommendations to drive industry decarbonisation

Wolseley has set out a series of recommendations for the government, which it believes, in collaboration with the heating and allied industries, will help to accelerate the drive to Net Zero.

The merchant giant unveiled its roadmap at an event in Westminster featuring MPs, policy experts, associations and industry partners.

Chief operating officer John Hancock outlined the recommendations, after context-setting presentations by Emily Nurse, the Climate Change Committee’s head of Net Zero, and energy expert Jan Rosenow.

Introducing the six points, John said:

We think we understand the heating industry. We’ve got a lot of contacts both with manufacturers but also with our customers – about 90,000 trade customers have an account with Wolseley across our residential and our commercial and our utility divisions. So we think we’re uniquely placed to assist with decarbonisation.”

The recommendations in the report Wolseley at Westminster are:

• Set out a clear, long-term implementation timeline for policy schemes, regulations, and the technologies underpinning home decarbonisation within the Warm Homes Plan.

John said:

I think what we really need is a clear long-term plan. We still await the Future Homes Standard and I think we need a firm date on a phaseout of gas boilers. Certainty helps us and helps investors.”

• Extend the Heat Training Grant to March 2029 and to Scotland and Wales in line with this parliamentary term.

Extending the grant to the end of the parliamentary term and across Wales and Scotland will improve UK-wide access, the merchant said.

• Ensure effective consumer protection within clean heat schemes.

The report notes that building trust in government and renewable technologies requires strong consumer protection. Heat pump installations are more complex than boilers, making safeguards against poor-quality work essential. Supporting consumers through a clear and simple route for redress would ease complexity and clarify accountability, improving confidence.

• Develop policy scheme rules and regulations to support a technology agnostic approach to homes decarbonisation.

Most homes are suitable for heat pumps, but some require alternative electric technologies, the report says. Updating policy scheme rules and regulations to accommodate different types of quality-assured heating technology can encourage the market to install measures where they are most cost-effective and technically feasible whilst ensuring that homes are matched with their most suited technology.

• Where technically feasible and cost-effective, policy should ensure that wet heating systems operate effectively at a low-flow temperature, getting homes heat pump ready.

In cases where households cannot afford to upgrade their existing gas heating system, existing combi-boiler systems can be optimised to operate at a low-flow temperature, the report notes. Homeowners can benefit from system efficiency, cost savings and familiarity with a low-flow system, paving the way for heat pumps.

• Ensure timely formation of Combined Authority’s Local Growth Plans and encourage public-industry collaboration. Regional authorities need clear strategies to address regional barriers to home decarbonisation.

The report states that Combined Authorities must publish 10-year Local Growth Plans promptly and work closely with industry to identify challenges and co-develop solutions.

Challenges ahead

John also noted a number of challenges, beginning with the logistics of heat pump technology, which he said would require significant change from the supply chain. He said:

“We think we sell probably just over 20% of all gas boilers that sold at the moment and 60% of those are collected from our trade counters every day. The sheer size and the weight of the heat pump means that is not going to be possible. We predict that pallet volumes will more than double, which means space at all our distributors. So we will need more warehousing space. But equally the challenge will be in getting the product to the consumer’s house – we will need ultimately more deliveries and bigger deliveries – it will mean a massive scale-up for the industry and already Wolseley are starting to invest in that new supply chain.”

A second challenge is training, he said, which the industry recognises, but perhaps does not appreciate the scale. Wolseley has modelled that 17 of its regions need four times more training of installers than is being achieved now.

He said: “If we are to hit the targets in 10 years time, the workforce needs to grow sevenfold, we will need another 44,000 installers.”

He also urged the government to make low temperature heating system training mandatory for Gas Safe engineers and then to educate installers and consumers in the benefits of making those changes when appliances are serviced on an annual basis or when systems are upgraded.

But overarching it all, he noted was collaboration. He said:

“The message is that we are here to collaborate and help. We think government can’t do this in isolation, but equally nor can this industry. We need to work together to decarbonise.”

Wolseley_Report_Online_version

The industry challenge

The Wolseley recommendations were given further context by presentations from two key voices in the journey to Net Zero. Firstly, Emily Nurse, Climate Change Committee’s head of Net Zero, set out the challenge of reducing emissions in the framework of the government’s Carbon Budgets and the Committee’s recommendations for accelerating progress.

She noted that to meet the seventh carbon budget’s target of reducing 87% of 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions would require both rapid decarbonising and a broadening of the sectors of the economy that would achieve this.

In this context, buildings should be an important focus – residential buildings is the second highest emitting sector after surface transport, with the majority being direct emissions from buildings from gas and oil boilers, she said. Non-residential buildings accounts for about half of those emissions.

Emily stressed that efficiency improvements, such as insulation and draughtproofing, had brought the emissions levels down over time, but just adding more efficiency measures would not be sufficient. She said:

To get the lion’s share of our emissions to reach net zero is in electrification of our economy, which includes continued decarbonisation of the grid. It includes electrification of how we heat our homes and also shifting to electric vehicles and electrifying some of industry. But in the case of buildings, we can get to pretty much zero emissions as we electrify and decarbonise the grid…What we really need to see is decarbonising the heating system and that’s the shift mostly to heat pumps.”

To reach the target, it would need around half of homes to be heated with a heat pump by 2040. Currently only 1% are, she said, and significantly, last year only 13% of newbuild homes were built with heat pumps installed. She said:

In 2024, 71% of new homes were built with fossil fuel heating. All of these homes will need to be retrofitted at a later date at higher costs, if you consider a 15-year lifetime of gas boiler. So this really needs to change quickly…”

She said that the CCC pathway forecasts around 450,000 installations by 2030, which although high, is based this on the growth rate in other European countries like Ireland and Netherlands. She added:

By 2035, we forecast 1.5 million homes a year will be installed with low carbon heating. What we need to know now is how that’s going to be delivered and so we are eagerly awaiting the Warm Homes Plan.”

Both Emily and fellow speaker Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project underlined that removing the spark gap should be the number one priority, to ensure that the efficiency of heat pumps is reflected in lower electricity bills.

Jan stated his belief that there are two crucial elements to growth: some initial funding for the capital cost and some form of regulation:

This should start with newbuild but most likely it should move on to include existing buildings, if we want to meet those really challenging targets – there are now various countries where the oil heating cannot be replaced with oil or gas boilers.”

Jan also underlined the vital role of good quality installation in ensuring that heat pump efficiency is properly leveraged. He said:

Efficiency really matters and so really high quality installations will help to build a better experience for a consumer and instil confidence in the market.”

He suggested that one approach to tackle the spark gap disparities could be to have a discount for heat pumps on the electricity bill, but warned that any such move could be politically charged.

Denmark has done this for many years, where you pay the minimum tax rate allowable under European union law for electricity used by heat pumps. I don’t know whether that will happen, but this may be one way around the difficult politics of reform. We have to avoid the polarisation around [heat pumps], which seems to be one that is highly politically charged and therefore I think we have to be quite careful how we handle some of these reforms.”