Homes Standard, which will mandate heat pumps in new builds, making the transition to Zero Bills specifications significantly easier for homeowners.
Navigating policy and barriers Nigel acknowledges that there are a great many challenges to overcome before Octopus’ mission can be actualised, particularly around government policy. While welcoming the UK Government’ s recently announced Warm Homes Plan, he notes that the country’ s energy taxation structure makes heat pumps a less attractive proposition than they are in countries like Scandinavia, where tax burdens favour electricity over gas.
“ In places like the Scandinavian region, lots of the tax burden sits more on gas than it does electricity and therefore there’ s massive savings to be had for customers moving to heat pumps away from oil and gas heating,” he explains.“ Whereas in the UK it’ s the other way around.”
Social housing schemes present another challenge. With rents set by the government, housing associations cannot adjust the prices to recover Zero Bills installation costs. Octopus has developed a“ Tenant Power” tariff to address this, splitting energy bill savings between tenants( who receive a 30 % discount) and landlords( who receive annual payments to recover their investment).
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