Recommendation 9

In March 2021 we reported that as much as 62% of future emissions reductions would rely on individual choices and behaviour but that government had not yet properly engaged with the public on substantial behavioural changes that achieving net zero would require.28 In our current inquiry, the Department told us that the most important consumer behaviour changes government is now seeking through its Strategy are the choices to buy an electric car, a heat pump and housing insulation.29 The Strategy has ‘targets and ambitions’ including 600,000 heat pump installations each year by 2028; as many homes as possible to be EPC Band C (a measure of energy efficiency) by 2035; and 100% of new cars and vans sold to be zero emission also by 2035.30 However, government often overestimates consumer buy-in to its policies aimed at reducing emissions.31 The Energy Systems Catapult, an independent, not-for profit centre of excellence set up by Innovate UK to promote collaboration between industry, government and academia, 20 Committee of Public Accounts, Carbon Capture and Storage, Sixty-fourth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 1036, 28 April 2017 21 Q 94; Committee of Public Accounts; Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme, Twenty-seventh Report of Session 2021–22, HC 635, 1 December 2021 22 Qq 94, 100; Comptroller and Auditor General, Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme, Session 2021–22, HC 302, 8 September 2021, para 7 23 NAPIT, page 3 24 Q 8 25 Qq 6, 8, 89, 99 26 Qq 89–103 27 Q 100 28 Committee of Public Accounts, Achieving Net Zero, Forty-Sixth Report of Session 2019 - 21, HC 935, 5 March 2021 29 Q 60 30 Net Zero Strategy, page 254–255 para 30 31 C&AG’s Report, para 18 12 Achieving Net Zero: Follow up highlights polices that are uneven and too weak to drive change, and has compared helping 70 million people transition to a low-carbon economy within a generation as likely to be more complex and complicated than the first lunar landing.32