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• Food shortages and soaring food prices; loss of homes and livelihoods due to flood damage* and storm surges – a huge rise in the cost of living
• These factors feeding racist and climate denialist narratives of the far right and rising levels of violence, undermining community solidarity and collective action
• Serious health risks from excessive heat, poor nutrition, water shortages, new viruses and insect-borne disease, mental health impacts, etc
• Within the next few decades, likelihood of very much harsher winters alongside hotter, dryer summers – in the worst-case scenario, the UK becomes uninhabitable

*9.8 million homes at risk by 2050 – (CCC – in yesterday’s Guardian)

It can’t be stated too often - climate change is still the biggest threat facing the working class

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• The condition of our homes is key to coping with this onslaught – a good enough reason in itself for an urgent programme of retrofitting for weather resilience!
• But unless we tackle the reliance on fossil fuels which is the main direct cause of global heating, the consequences will be catastrophic
• Homes have a key role – without action to fix the energy waste in our homes, there is little chance of stopping the emissions that are wrecking lives.

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Home heating causes around 19% of UK GHG emissions ….

• Government “flagship” climate policy emphasises clean power (ie electricity) generation, but around 85% of UK homes are still heated with gas.
• In 2022 (last available stats) direct burning of gas in homes = about 13.4% of UK GHG emissions - the vast majority for heating.
• Homes also made up around 40 per cent of total electricity use, equating to another 5.6% of GHG emissions
• All gas use contributes to emissions of methane from flaring and venting during extraction, and leakage during transmission.
• Burning gas (or hydrogen) increases nitrous oxide in the air – a GHG that also contributes to lung diseases

…and is a crucial part of the wider energy system

Decarbonising the energy system means:

• Eliminating oil and gas burning and doubling(?) electricity generation
• Generating electricity only from renewables
• Reinforcing the grid to cope with additional supply
• Reducing overall energy demand (ie across all sectors) by 50/60%(?)
• Managing the balance between supply and demand
• Retrofitting homes makes an essential contribution by:
• Eliminating gas and reducing overall energy needs
• Reducing peaks in demand
• Reducing burden on the grid and grid-level storage
• Contributing to system flexibility

- when it’s done right!

• For the leakiest homes, a package of basic measures – loft, wall and/or floor insulation, new windows, draught stripping – could cut energy use by at least 50%, reduce peaks in demand and help keep the house cool in a heat wave.
• Solar panels and batteries reduce demand on the grid, and aid load spreading by using the electricity at times of peak demand.
• An electric heat pump is about 3 times more energy efficient than a gas boiler, even when the electricity is generated using gas. Heat pumps can also remove excess heat during heat waves.
• Solar collectors gather heat energy from the sun and transfer it to a water tank for hot water, reducing electricity use and aiding load spreading.
• Thermal batteries store heat generated during off-peak times, to be used later – reducing peak demand.
• “Smart” energy use – using appliances at times of low demand

The Warm Homes Plan

£15bn committed during this Parliament, of which:

• Low-income schemes (£5bn)
• Consumer loan (£2bn)
• Boiler Upgrade Scheme (£2.7bn) – the main vehicle for heat pump subsidy
• Other programmes (£1.5bn)
• Warm Homes Fund (£2.7bn) – some will probably go on grid upgrades

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Note that despite the £5m allocated to low income schemes there is still a strong onus on individual householders, and won’t close the affordability gap in many cases.

A strong emphasis on rooftop solar, batteries, heat pumps, and smart tech; the UK Green Building Council notes this underplays the essential role of fabric upgrades in enabling efficient, affordable heat pump use.

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Is it enough?

No! – compare the £15bn for the Warm Homes Plan with;

• tens of billions committed for ineffective technologies like carbon capture and storage (a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry!).
• 3bn in energy company profit from UK operations in the first 3 months of 2026

Even if that whole £15bn was spent on direct labour and materials for the 5 million most fuel-poor and leaky homes, that’s only £3,000 each – nowhere near enough to cover a basic package of measures.

This makes no sense when homes burn more gas and produce more emissions than power stations; and when the urgent roll-out of renewable electricity requires deep reductions in energy use.

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Climate action is a jobs issue, and a union issue

Our booklet Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency estimates that a retrofit workforce of 2 million needs to be built over a period of 10 years, including technical trades, retrofit assessors and planners.

The majority of these would be new entrants to the labour market, job seekers and workers requiring financial support and training to update their skills or move from a different sector.

The existing construction workforce is poorly unionised and concentrated in small businesses with slim profit margins with little ability to pay for upskilling or to offer good apprenticeships or work experience for trainees.

Workers in roles impacted by the energy transition, eg gas engineers and others employed in fossil fuel supply chains, need protection of incomes and job quality, and guaranteed access into the new jobs (or support to move to another sector).

Warm Homes Plan Workforce Taskforce

• A collaboration between DESNZ (Minister Martin McCluskey and the TUC (Assistant GS Kate Bell) – aims to address some of this.
• Representatives of Unite, GMB, E3G (climate change “think tank”), Energy UK (trade association), the Mayoral Council, National Home Improvement Council, Construction Industry Training Board, and National Retrofit Hub
• Five main “themes”:

job quality

sectoral resilience

strategic local delivery

skills provision

the future of gas workers.

Nothing reported publicly so far but due to report on progress in November

We’re in a culture war, and a deadly political crisis

Climate action of every kind is under attack from the parties and movements of the far right, largely funded by fossil fuel interests and bent on creating reaction against climate action.

Securing a just transition for workers and communities can’t mean leaving the need to protect the climate out of the discussion. It does mean campaigning for the climate measures that also create good employment, tackle the cost of living and improve lives – and ensuring that working class people don’t have to foot the bill.��The Warm Homes Plan is a step in the right direction, recognising needs for training and workforce planning, certainty for supply chains, accountability to residents and accessible advice and information, a strong role for LAs and support for in-housing of labour.

But it falls far short of what is needed to meet the scale of the emergency

Some suggestions/discussion points 1

• The climate emergency cannot be resolved by the market, nor with a hotch-potch of small grants and “incentives” to homeowners, lenders, training providers and trainees. Instead, it requires extensive public ownership with integrated workforce and technology planning and a secure public employment framework for workers.
• In the case of homes retrofit, this means a comprehensive programme of public works, delivered by LAs in collaboration with local training providers, with unionised direct labour organisations. It also means addressing the difficult but not unique problem of integrating interventions in the domestic sphere (such as rooftop solar and home battery storage) with the wider integration of the energy system.

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Some suggestions/discussion points 2

• Trade unions must be involved in workforce transition planning, identifying barriers and training needs, arguing for worker-centred delivery models and ensuring protection of incomes.
• We also need workers speaking out publicly: workers experienced in retrofit voicing their experience of what works and what doesn’t; workers talking about the barriers they experience to careers in retrofit and the problems they face transitioning from a declining sector.
• But climate change is a universal threat, and good housing is a universal need. Workers and unions in every sector need to be involved in organising behind that demand, alongside climate activists and grass roots community groups. Union involvement has been a gap in much previous retrofit campaigning, and this needs to be rectified.

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