Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us.

First, my sincere thanks to our headline sponsor, SOPREMA UK, and our gold sponsor, Mitsubishi Electric. Your support enables the SEA to continue championing better heat and buildings policy across the UK. And of course, thank you to Lord Ravensdale for your leadership, and to Minister McCluskey for being with us tonight.

Where We Stand

For over two decades, the SEA has argued for a whole‑building, holistic approach to heat and buildings policy, an approach that is arguably more urgently needed now than ever. Energy prices remain volatile, fuel poverty persists at unacceptable levels, and despite progress, the UK continues to have some of the least efficient buildings in Europe.

The Warm Homes Plan provides a welcome and strong foundation: higher energy standards in rented homes, expanded grant schemes, access to consumer finance, a clearer path to heat decarbonisation, and now the Government’s intention to phase out fossil fuel heating in new homes by 2028 through the Future Homes and Buildings Standards. These commitments matter, and we welcome them.

But the Plan is — by design — largely a plan for this Parliament, and major gaps remain.

The Two Big Gaps

1. The Squeezed Middle of Owner-Occupiers

Millions of households sit just above eligibility thresholds for support. They earn too much to qualify for grants but too little to comfortably finance major improvements. Loans alone won’t solve this. Unless the numbers add up for consumers, they simply won’t invest, whether or not low-cost finance is available to them.

The stock response to energy shocks is to find money to support people struggling with bills. In the short term, there is little political choice, but this could be avoided by investing more up-front into redirecting more support toward energy‑saving measures that permanently lower bills and reduce exposure to future price shocks. Put simply, if we fix the building, we fix the problem.

2. The Non‑Domestic Sector

Non‑domestic buildings — especially the 60% that are rented — represent a huge, largely untapped opportunity. Raising minimum standards here, as the Government plans to do so in the housing sector, would cut costs for thousands of businesses, strengthen competitiveness, and significantly reduce vulnerability to global energy market volatility.

This is an area where faster action and clearer direction would deliver substantial economic and carbon benefits.

3. Looking Beyond This Parliament

While no Government can bind future spending, the long‑term nature of heat and buildings investment means we need greater policy certainty that extends beyond the next three years.

There are tools available that can unlock this:

• Continuing and refining existing subsidy schemes
• Linking policy more closely with actual building performance
• Enabling consumers to access value from flexibility
• More coherent regulation that phases out high‑carbon options over time,

and

• Streamlined routes to market for innovators

Together, these measures can decouple the sector from political cycles, reduce bills, strengthen energy security and secure much higher levels of investor confidence.

Heat Decarbonisation: The Challenges Ahead

The reduction in electricity levies is welcome — it will improve competitiveness for electric heating. But levy rebalancing alone will not make electrified heat cheaper than gas over its lifetime. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme helps, but as costs scale, subsidy alone cannot be the long‑term answer.

The UK has been here before: periods of progress followed by sudden subsidy withdrawal, leading to industry contraction — whether for insulation or low‑carbon heating. We must not repeat this cycle.

A stable regulatory pathway, coupled with industry scaling and consumer access to value from flexibility, can deliver lower‑cost electrified heating without indefinite subsidies.

Let’s remember that, whilst no-one disputes that heat pumps will be a mass market heating solution, there are many buildings where other technologies may prove more cost-effective or practical.

There are promising innovations in other forms of electric heating such as infrared, high heat retention storage heaters, other forms of smart storage and heat transfer technologies, smart controls, as well as promising innovations in providing hot water – heat recovery from showers and baths, smart hot water cylinders and solar thermal – all increasingly more important as hot water becomes an increasingly higher proportion of demand as space heating requirements reduce. Of course, all this works better with improved fabric energy efficiency, which joins up the policy strands.

Supporting Innovation

Innovation remains one of our brightest opportunities, yet too many pioneering companies face years‑long accreditation processes costing hundreds of thousands of pounds. That burden stifles progress.

The SEA’s work with the Energy Systems Catapult and Innovate UK — including the Sherpa service and the new test protocols developed with BRE — shows what can be achieved when government and industry work side by side. We encourage Government to go further, drawing inspiration from Wales’s Optimised Retrofit Programme, which carves out special treatment for innovators to prove their worth.

Our innovation members — from infrared heating pioneers to advanced fabric technologies — show us daily what is possible when the right environment is created.

Our Plans for the Year Ahead

Our policy work is grounded in real‑world experience. Over the past year our team has been out across the UK: meeting members, speaking at conferences, engaging Parliament, and supporting our vibrant working groups and briefings. This engagement has grown rapidly — and will continue to do so in 2026.

We have an ambitious programme ahead, including:

• Strengthening our Parliamentary engagement
• Expanding networking and member events
• Publishing new work on demand‑side measures, smart energy, and in‑use performance
• Continuing to champion holistic, whole‑building, technology‑agnostic policy

Closing Remarks

The SEA will continue to support the implementation of the Warm Homes Plan. But we will also continue to push for the long‑term, interconnected thinking that heat and buildings policy urgently requires.

Our goal is simple:
Energy‑efficient, net‑zero, warm and healthy homes and workplaces, and a stable, confident market able to deliver them.

Thank you to our sponsors SOPREMA UK and Mitsubishi Electric, to you Minister and your officials for your time and partnership, and to the fantastic SEA team and the analysts at Talan that help us put together robust, evidence-based proposals that we hope assist in driving this mission forward.