The UK government is being urged to cut the price of electricity and come off fossil fuels for most of the economy.

The independent advisor, the Climate Change Commission, said making electricity cheaper would help people feel the benefit of the energy transition. It would also increase the uptake of clean electric technologies.

In the first progress report on the new government’s progress on emissions cuts, the CCC said today:

“Our highest-priority recommendation is to remove policy costs from electricity prices. This will support industrial electrification and ensure the underlying lower running costs of heat pumps compared to fossil fuel boilers are reflected in household bills.”

The CCC also said replacing fossil fuel cars and boilers with electric vehicles and heat pumps would improve air quality and health. It urged the government to implement regulations to ensure that new homes were not connected to the gas grid.

Currently 71% of new homes have fossil fuel boilers. The CCC said:

[This] “creates additional emissions, bakes in costs for the future owners of these homes for retrofitting with low-carbon heating, and means poorer air quality for the families who move in.”

The report added:

“To eliminate emissions from homes by 2050 and avoid unnecessary costs associated with boilers being replaced before the end of their typical lifetime, no new fossil fuel boilers should be installed from 2035. This requires deployment of low-carbon heating systems to reach the replacement rate of existing heating systems by that point.”

It said a typical new home with a gas boiler emits about 1.2tCO2e per year. For every year there is a delay to the proposed Future Homes Standard, which requires low-carbon heating, there would be additional annual emissions of around 0.25MtCO2e, the CCC said. These additional emissions would need to be counterbalanced by more reductions elsewhere, it added.

The report said a fossil-fuelled future would leave the UK increasingly dependent on imports. Energy bills would remain subject to volatile fossil fuel prices. Professor Piers Forster, the interim CCC chair, said:

“the Government needs to do more to ensure people see the benefits of climate action in their bills.

“Given increasingly unstable geopolitics, it is also important to get off unreliable fossil fuels and onto homegrown, renewable energy as quickly as possible.

“The fossil fuel era is over – cheap, clean electricity is our future.”

The CCC said the UK could be proud of its progress in lowering emissions: a cut of just over 50% since 1990.

2024 saw a UK emissions fall of 2.5%, the 10^th consecutive year of sustained emissions reductions, excluding the covid-19 years of 2020 and 2021.

The CCC said most of the progress in the past year resulted from the previous government’s policy. But it said the Starmer government had made “bold policy decisions”, including on removing planning barriers on renewable and reinstatement on the phase-out date for new petrol and diesel cars.

The UK was within reach of ambitious targets to reduce emissions, provided the government stayed on course, the CCC said:

“Future progress will require a broader change, especially using low-carbon electricity to replace oil and gas in surface transport, heat in buildings, and industry, alongside nature-based solutions such as tree planting, and engineered removals.”

The CCC’s seventh carbon budget advised 60% of the emissions reduction would be through electrification and low-carbon electricity. By 2040, the UK would need twice as much electricity as today.