Homeowners are to be offered a £5000 grant to help them replace their gas boilers with low-carbon heat pumps under a new scheme announced by Boris Johnson.
The grants, which will become available from next April, and will be limited to the first 90,000 applicants, are part of a wider £3.9bn Government plan to cut carbon emissions from heating buildings.
Announcing the plans, Mr Johnson said: “As we clean up the way we heat our homes over the next decade, we are backing our brilliant innovators to make clean technology like heat pumps as cheap to buy and run as gas boilers – supporting thousands of green jobs.
“Our new grants will help homeowners make the switch sooner, without costing them extra, so that going green is the better choice when their boiler needs an upgrade.”
It is estimated that throughout the UK gas boilers are used in around 85% of homes.
What is a heat pump?
They look like a standard air-conditioning unit and can usually be found outside a home. The heat pump works like a reverse fridge, extracting warmth from the outside air, the ground or a nearby water source before concentrating the heat and transferring it indoors.
