© Photography by Liz Seabrook / Nesta / Climate Visuals
Words by Dr Chantal-Sullivan Thomsett (Theme 2 Co-lead)
CAST Theme 2 Co-lead, Dr Chantal-Sullivan Thomsett, shares her reflections on the ambitious climate policy of Labour’s Warm Homes Plan and the impact of its success and public perceptions in the context of increasing politicisation.
What’s the wider context?
Since joining CAST in 2022, I have been closely following climate politics and policy in both the UK and Germany. When I started, former American President Biden’s unprecedented investment in renewables and low-carbon technologies via the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) left the EU and the UK finding ways to ensure that, for example, their domestic electric car manufacturers were not disadvantaged in the American market.
In some ways, the context in which I started my CAST work seems like another lifetime ago. So much has changed politically in the climate space in the UK and beyond in the last three years. For example, 2023 saw big shifts in climate policy: former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared his more ‘pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic approach to meeting Net Zero’; whilst attempts in Germany to decarbonise home heating were met with fierce public and political backlash.
Entering 2026, we have seen stronger criticism of net zero from Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party and Reform in the UK, and a new German government where climate policy has had a much lower profile. These developments are occurring in the broader context of President Trump’s second term, who is once again eschewing international climate commitments and, just a few weeks ago, signed an executive order for the US to leave the IPCC and UNFCCC among other climate bodies, as ‘international organizations, conventions, and treaties that are contrary to the interests of the United States’.
Key messages from the Warm Homes Plan
It is this context that has made the UK Labour government’s ambitious Warm Homes Plan, announced in January 2026, even more striking. Seemingly, climate action is one policy area where Labour is not willing to pander to Reform UK. A comprehensive, detailed, and relatively well-funded set of proposals, the Warm Homes Plan sets out policies and strategies to spur decarbonisation of heating, improve energy efficiency, tackle energy poverty, and increase the affordability of energy and low-carbon technologies, especially rooftop solar. The press release for the policy highlights the substantial public investment as part of the ‘biggest home upgrade plan in British history’: £15 billion to help ‘millions of families benefit from solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and insulation’ and how they help cut bills in the long term.
In the plan, released on 21st January, they cite OBR calculations that the previous government’s energy support policies following the Russian invasion of Ukraine cost the public purse £42 billion. The new Warm Homes Plan seeks to spend just over a third of that amount to overcome the initial outlay of installation of insulation, solar panels, batteries, or heat pumps for homeowners, social and private landlords, with subsidies and low or no-interest loans, with the highest subsidies reserved for the least well-off.
The plan stops short of committing to a date for the phase out of gas boilers, hoping that incentives will spur the transition alone. In fact, some of the more right-wing press have highlighted the lower heat pump target in the plan as a sign that demand for heat pumps is on the decline. Nor does it tackle the electricity-to-gas price ratio, which can disincentivise heat pump take-up as it makes electricity costs comparably expensive. The latter omission has long been called for by thinktanks and charities in the energy sector, and is essential to drive the number of households deciding to adopt heat pumps closer to government targets.
Lessons learnt from ‘how not to transform’ in Germany
- Affordability
In the German case, the lack of detail on assistance for poorer individuals in particular, together with a date from which new gas boilers would be phased out, led to affordability for citizens being a central component in the backlash. In the Labour government’s Warm Homes Plan, the notion of affordability, particularly for less wealthy households, has been placed front and centre. The actions denoted in the plan to increase the uptake of technologies such as solar, heat pumps, batteries, and insulation are framed as a long-term weapon against the ‘affordability crisis’ and can ‘cut the cost of living permanently’.
- Communication strategy
Unlike in Germany, the UK government has benefited from the fact that its policy wasn’t leaked during its draft stages. Besides the plan’s clear cost of living and affordability framing, the press release contains a considerable number of supporting statements from a wide variety of stakeholder organisations from energy poverty charities, renters charities, banks and financial services, trade unions, energy companies, business and landlord interest groups (e.g. the CBI and the National Residential Landlord Association), pro-climate think tanks, Ofgem, Checkatrade, and other energy and construction interest groups. This broad base of policy endorsements is a way of illustrating a broad level of engagement with relevant stakeholders, evidencing that this policy has been considered and well-thought through, and not just a first draft.
- Choice
The third main lesson learnt from Germany is communicating that this transition will provide individuals with the freedom to choose the technology that is right for their home. This is most evident in that the plan does not compel people to get rid of their gas boiler by a certain date, as was the case in Germany. In this way, Labour has kept its 2024 election manifesto pledge that ‘nobody will be forced to rip out their boiler as a result of our plans.’ Instead, the message of this plan that the government would like to be picked up through the press release is that the Warm Homes Plan ‘will support consumer choice for all households, so people can choose the technologies that work for them as and when they want.’
Interestingly, the plan does advocate far fewer technologies than those of the German low-carbon heating reforms. In Labour’s Warm Homes Plan, the clear focus is on predominantly electric heat via hydronic and air-to-air heat pumps, as well as solar and heat batteries. The only other technologies they mention are heat networks, which are given an entire chapter of the plan, and limited installations of biomass boilers for rural properties. Unlike the eventual policy in Germany that permitted ‘hydrogen-ready boilers’, the Warm Homes Plan is more sceptical about the role that Hydrogen will play in domestic heating.
How has climate politicisation impacted the plan’s reception?
Of course, looking at just over a week’s worth of reaction to a plan that is about a longer-term transition will not capture everything. Despite the level of public investment and the ambitious nature of the policy, public debate about it has been remarkably small. In terms of newspaper front pages, the Warm Homes Plan went under the radar of more prominent media stories such as the Beckham family drama, President Trump on Greenland and NATO, as well as Andy Burnham potentially standing for Labour in the Gorton and Denton by-election. A cynic might argue that it was a good news week to release a potentially divisive policy…
Reform and the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch have long been vocal about their critique of net zero, but they did not mount a particularly loud or coordinated response against this policy package. When the Warm Homes Plan was debated in Parliament on 21st January, there was only one Conservative MP responding to Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband’s announcements, and no one from Reform took part in the debate. Indeed, the Conservatives sent a junior shadow energy minister, Andrew Bowie, rather than the shadow secretary of state Claire Coutinho. Coutinho did not even comment on the plan on her X account. The main Conservative challenge to the Warm Homes Plan? A perceived public scepticism of heat pumps, and what they call the ‘sky-high running costs’ of these heating technologies.
Instead, the parliamentary debate consisted mainly of Labour backbenchers praising the plan, and Liberal Democrat and Green MPs questioning the dominance of electrification in the plan rather than home insulation. Indeed, opinion tracking of MPs by Climate Barometer in October 2025 found that support for home insulation is one policy area where both Conservative and Labour MPs are largely in agreement. This is surely the policy angle that is politically safest, yet the one focused on during Ed Miliband’s appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme was solar panels. As such, the little discussion on Today concentrated on the fact that solar is not ‘home-grown energy’ with its reliance on a predominantly Chinese supply chain at risk of involving slave labour.
Risky messages moving forward
Despite the increased politicisation of climate and net zero in the UK in recent years, the initial launch of the Warm Homes Plan has, thus far, gone quite smoothly. However, keeping track of the ongoing media and party-political responses to the plan is illuminating some messages that could potentially undermine the policy efforts in the longer term if they gain traction with the public.
- “Heat pumps don’t save you money”
We know this is an argument that the Conservatives are already putting forward in response to the Warm Homes Plan. More worryingly, Dale Vince, founder of energy company Ecotricity and Labour Party donor, has been vocal in the right-wing press about his dislike for heat pumps. He is supportive of the push on solar panels, but states that households will end up spending ‘around 30 per cent’ more for energy by switching to a heat pump. Vince’s appearances have not gone unnoticed by Reform MP Richard Tice, who celebrated on X that Vince agrees with him.
Interestingly, despite Vince’s appearances on GB News and in The Telegraph and The Times, these outlets have published other pieces within the same week with testimonials from individuals who have made the shift to heat pumps. The Times featured a woman who owns two homes: one which had a heat pump and solar panels which worked very well, and one with just solar panels that struggled due to a poor connection with her smart meter. GB News featured a man who cut his energy bills by £1,400 a year after switching to a heat pump and solar panels. And The Telegraph spoke to two households that have saved money by just installing a battery. These Janus-faced narratives on heat pumps and other technologies in these publications could cause confusion and fear amongst the public without clear information.
- “This won’t help the poorest, it’ll make it worse”
Another financially founded criticism of the Warm Homes Plan focuses on the impact of the policy on the poorest in society. Upon the Plan’s launch, The Express featured an opinion piece by the leader of an energy poverty charity emphasising that the plan ‘must help those in fuel poverty’. Whilst the plan attempts to cultivate a message that the poorest will receive the most help, and not have to pay it back, the Conservatives maintain that it will help only ‘one in five households’. As such, the Conservatives are attempting to create a perception of the policy as unfair to all.
The ultimate perception of the policy will also be determined by its implementation and how the government is able to mitigate any unintended consequences it may have for the least wealthy in our society. For instance, just four days after the plan was announced, coverage in the Daily Mail was insinuating that the new energy efficiency standards being applied to rental properties will ‘ramp up’ tenants’ rents. Such a consequence needs to be managed carefully to ensure the Warm Homes Plan does not harm those on low incomes.
- “More dodgy installations with a lack of consumer protection”
The Warm Homes Plan itself talks about the shocking quality of external wall insulation installations conducted under previous ECO (Energy Company Obligation) schemes. They do so to try to assuage concerns that things will be different by the creation of a central body: the Warm Homes Agency, which should ensure consumers are more protected with these new installations. Coverage of the Plan in The Times focused on the past ECO failures, reminding readers that proponents of those schemes had also provided assurances of consumer protections.
This point has been underscored in an opinion piece in The Express with the Director of Policy and Advocacy at consumer affairs group Which?. With stories about dodgy installations with local-authority-approved heat pump installers in the West Midlands published just three days later in The i Paper, it will take a concerted effort from policymakers and installers to build consumer confidence in the heating transition.
- “Chinese solar with slave labour”
This final message on Chinese supply chains is the most prominent thus far in the policy debate. It was the main talking point on Ed Miliband’s appearance on the Today programme on Radio 4, and has also been picked up in the press when reporting on the launch of the Warm Homes Plan. For instance, The Daily Mail link this solar policy to the government’s other China policy positions on domestic security and human rights to indicate a sense of perceived hypocrisy. But it is not just solar that is being associated with China. For Reform, this angle is also used for heat pumps to distance them from ‘lovely British boilers’. This is summed up by MP Richard Tice’s post on X, shown below:
On heat pump supply, the Warm Homes Plan actually goes into quite a lot of detail about supporting the UK’s strong boiler manufacturing base to transition into clean heating manufacturing and supplying heat pumps. Not only is this about strengthening the British supply chain for heat pumps, but also about creating ‘well-paid, good jobs’. Minister for Climate Katie White emphasised this via a social media video with young apprentices working in clean heat manufacturing and installing at Vaillant in Derbyshire. Vaillant was one of the case studies included as support within the Plan, alongside another Case Study on Ideal Heating and its sites in Hull and Blackpool, boosting UK manufacturing of heat pumps. Evidently, more needs to be done to get this message out of the plan and into the public sphere.
Taking the public with them
The Warm Homes Plan is an ambitious and steadfast commitment to climate action in the face of increasing politicisation. Accused of pandering to Reform on immigration policy, Labour’s unwavering and substantial investment in clean energy certainly sets them apart from both Reform and the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch. But as CAST research found in Germany’s attempt to introduce low-carbon heating policy, it is essential that politicians advocating this policy take the public with them.
More importantly, the government must not let their political opponents shape the public discourse on the policy. So far, the Warm Homes Plan has clearly deliberately crafted its messages to get the public onside and has emerged relatively unscathed. However, this could be down to more dominant news stories at its launch. Tracking the counternarratives to the policy, including the four identified here, could help advocates of the plan work proactively to lessen these unhelpful messages moving forward.
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