David T. C. Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David T. C. Davies on 2014-06-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, if he will bring forward proposals to encourage households off the mains gas grid to use condensing boilers.

Michael Fallon

The Government fully recognises that Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) and oil, like other fossil fuels, will continue to play a part in the UK’s energy mix, while the way we heat our homes changes. DECC has introduced the domestic renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme to support renewable heating systems. The domestic RHI is targeted predominately at off gas-grid households, by compensating for the additional costs faced when replacing an oil boiler with a renewable heating system. New incentives for oil and LPG boilers would undermine the balance struck in the design of the RHI, and potentially cause confusion for consumers.

The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) will continue to support oil and LPG condensing boilers for low income and vulnerable households. By February this year around 320,000 households were helped under ECO. We are making changes to ECO to provide a greater incentive for targeting measures at off-gas grid households.