Consumers need guaranteed long-term savings before being encouraged to change home heating

Consumers considering changes to their home heating systems must be given clear, honest and reliable information about long-term energy bill impacts, not optimistic projections or short-term incentives, according to a new statement from the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA). 

With households facing major financial decisions around replacing heating systems, the EUA is urging policymakers, regulators and industry to put consumer protection at the heart of heating policy by ensuring any promoted technology can deliver genuine, sustained and verifiable annual savings over its full lifetime. 

“Home heating systems are long-term investments, often lasting 10 to 15 years or more,” said Mike Foster, Chief Executive of the Energy and Utilities Alliance. “Consumers are being asked to make decisions involving thousands of pounds in upfront costs. To protect household finances, any claims about savings must be realistic, durable and guaranteed over time – not dependent on best-case assumptions or factors outside a consumer’s control.” 

The EUA stresses the issue is not a debate about specific technologies, but about financial fairness and transparency so that no consumer is left worse off after following official advice or joining government-backed schemes. 

The organisation is calling for clear disclosure of realistic lifetime costs and savings, stronger safeguards around publicly funded schemes, including annual system efficiency checks, and more emphasis on long-term performance instead of focusing on upfront subsidies alone.  

“Households deserve impartial, high-quality information that allows them to compare options fairly and make choices that work for their finances, their property and their circumstances,” Foster added. “Successful decarbonisation depends on public trust. That trust will only be maintained if consumers can be confident that changing their heating system will not expose them to financial harm. Annual system efficiency checks build consumer confidence in new technologies.”