Will gas heating have a negative impact on the EPC going forwards?

Watch Jason Hewins from Elmhurst Energy answer the following question during our recent webinar on compliance changes.

Will gas heating have a negative impact on the EPC going forwards?

You can watch the full webinar here:
   • Green Homes Series - Webinar 1 - Helping y...  

Good question. It's probably worth reflecting on where we are currently with the EPC. The EPC is currently as we know a cost based rating. Gas performs very well in EPC currently if we compare to electric that's I'm guessing that's where the questions probably aimed at.

At the moment a common thing that we get asked at Elmhurst is, “I've switched to a heat pump, why is my rating no better than gas or even worse?”, and that's all to do with the cost of electricity in this country, it's around 4 times more expensive per unit than gas.

As the EPC is a cost based rating, if your heat pumps not at least four times as efficient as the gas boiler, you'll get around about the same EPC rating. Now obviously that doesn't really tally with where the government are trying to go to using low carbon heating.

Hence EPC reform proposed using additional metrics. In terms of will it make will gas perform worse? It depends which metric you are looking at on the new EPC. If we stay on the cost based metric, I don't think gas will perform worse because I don't see any major shifts in the way gas is going to be priced in the future.

Electricity may perform better if the government choose to do something with the unit cost of electricity, to encourage heat pumps. If we look at a carbon based metric, however, then it would be completely the other way around. Electricity will perform very well on a carbon based metric because we know the grid is decarbonizing and will continue to do so.

Whereas gas at the moment is about 60% higher per unit of fuel in terms of carbon emissions. So it really depends on what metrics the government choose to place on the new EPC.

If it's price related, gas probably won't perform any worse than it currently does. If it's carbon related, then gas will perform worse than it would probably do compared to cost, because electricity is the way the government are heading from a net zero perspective.

LL : And I think we can’t not take into account that direction of travel, of electrification, of heat. I think, getting heat pumps in every home / private rental property by 2030 is quite a very tall ask, isn't it?
I've fed back on the consultation that they should include a heating transition plan in the cost cap.
So even if you can it doesn't make sense to do an upgrade to electrify your heating at this point.

At least you've got a plan in the next 10-15 years so that when that boiler needs replacing, you've got a plan for that. It feels like a next phase. This phase is like; right, let's just get the energy efficiency out, maybe get some solar panels on and then after that we'll look at the electrification more.

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