Low carbon homes a preference for half of UK adults

New research from KMPG indicated that around half (49 per cent) of UK adults looking to move would prefer a low carbon home with green technology solutions. However, costs and misinformation remain key barriers.

The survey carried out by Opinium Research on behalf of KPMG targeted 2,000 UK adults looking to move home. The survey found that 63 per cent believe UK households need to reduce emissions from their home, driving a desire for green technology and retrofit solutions. Overall, respondents see the key benefits of low carbon homes as being reduced energy bills (53 per cent), wasting less energy (44 per cent), and it helps reduce climate change (44 per cent).

Regardless of clear appetite for low carbon homes, misinformation is a key barrier preventing people from investing in relevant solutions. Taking the example of heat pumps, 37 per cent of UK adults admit to knowing nothing about heat pumps, 26 per cent think heat pumps aren’t suitable for UK homes, and 49 per cent believe heat pumps will require huge changes to the home in order to work. There is a clear lack of understanding regarding how heat pumps work in a household setting, with 19 per cent believing they don’t work in cold weather, and 25 per cent believing the UK doesn’t get enough sunshine for solar panels to work.

Despite this lack of understanding among consumers, 50 per cent believe solar panels and heat pumps with save them money on their energy bill, and 37 per cent even believe they will make their home more comfortable.

“The UK has some of the leakiest, inefficient houses in Euroope, and we are already well behind on adopting lower carbon technologies like heat pumps, compared to our neighbours,” said Simon Virley CB, Vice Chair and Head of Energy and Natural Resources at KPMG. “To date, we have seen a stop-start approach to policymaking in this area. This has led to confused consumers, who widely see the benefits but just don’t know where to begin, and a lot of negative messages around costs and disruption have been allowed to fill the vacuum.”

While UK adults maintain the belief that their homes are unsuitable for certain technologies, and that these technologies will be unable to deliver cost and energy savings in the UK environment, the uptake of green technologies to retrofit households will sit below the level needed to deliver net zero.

Financial support from government and local authorities alongside information campaigns informing UK consumers how they can go about obtaining and installing low carbon technologies in the home would encourage households to upgrade. At present, one in seven of the survey respondents said they had not given any thought to green tech upgrades at their home, while 12 per cent “didn’t know where to look” for information.

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