However, the Government did not provide any extra measures to help support energy efficiency measures for homeowners, after the failure of its Green Homes Grant last year. 

A more cautious approach to hydrogen for home heating emerged in the strategy, though all new boilers could be required to be “hydrogen-ready” from 2026. But the Government said that from 2035, hydrogen-ready boilers should only be installed in areas that will have access to supply. 

A hydrogen village trial will inform a decision on the use of the gas for home heating by 2026. 

In the area selected for the trial, an engineer will require access to homes to switch them over, with residents “unlikely to have control over when this happens”.

The strategy emphasises the role that heat pumps will play in decarbonising homes, and says it plans to increase the costs of gas through carbon pricing and switching environmental levies from electricity bills to encourage take up. 

Nature

Tree-planting will treble by May 2024 as the Government seeks to create new woodlands to capture more carbon from the atmosphere. 

Overall, the UK has a target of increasing planting rates to 30,000 hectares each year by the end of this Parliament. Last year around 2,200 hectares of trees were planted in England, according to Forestry Commission figures. 

The Government also wants to restore 280,000 hectares of peatland in England by 2050, around 40 per cent of the whole, and will commit an extra £124 million for its nature goals. 

Peat is one of the country’s biggest carbon stores, but it has been drained and damaged for horticulture and farming, meaning it actually releases more carbon than it removes from the atmosphere, producing around four per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. 

There are also plans, and £295 million in funding, to introduce free separate food waste collections for every household by 2025, in a delay to the original plan to do this by 2023.

The aim is for almost no biodegradable waste to go to landfill by 2028, in an attempt to cut methane emissions, a greenhouse gas, which has a significantly higher warming effect than carbon dioxide in the short term.

Energy

The Net Zero strategy confirms government plans to decarbonise electricity generation by 2035 – 15 years earlier than first envisaged – “subject to security of supply”. 

Its planned power system of 2035 will include wind, solar and nuclear power.  

Gas-fired power stations will still be used, but coupled with carbon capture systems to scrub out the emissions. Hydrogen will help smooth out periods of intermittent wind and solar. 

The strategy is hugely ambitious, with fossil fuels generating 43.1 per cent of UK electricity in 2019 – mostly gas, and a small amount of coal (2.1 per cent).