EV and Heat Pump Sales in the UK Are Higher Than Ever: CCC Report

According to a new assessment from the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK is making strong progress on reducing emissions, particularly with higher electric vehicle and heat pump sales. However, these trends will need to continue to ramp up for the UK to meet climate goals, and the government will need to work toward making electricity more affordable and accessible to residents.

“The government has made progress on a number of fronts, including on clean power, [but] they need to do more on making electricity cheap,” Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive at the CCC, told BBC News.

The CCC found that the UK has seen significant growth in just the past year for multiple key areas for reducing emissions and meeting climate targets. The UK has an international pledge to reduce emissions 68% by 2030 compared to levels in 1990, Energy Voice reported. The country has also set a legally binding goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“The UK can be proud of our progress in reducing emissions. We’ve cut them by over 50% since 1990,” Piers Forster, interim chair of the CCC, said in a statement. “Our country is among a leading group of economies demonstrating a commitment to decarbonise society. This is to be celebrated: delivering deep emissions reduction is the only way to slow global warming.”

According to the assessment, the new car EV market share is up to nearly 20% as of last year, heat pump installations increased 56% and woodland creation increased by 59%.

Further, the current UK government has already made policies to reduce friction from planning restrictions for renewable energy projects and re-establish 2030 as the phase-out date for new gas- and diesel-fueled vehicles.

The CCC noted that despite such progress, more action is needed to make the clean energy transition faster and more accessible, including through reducing electricity costs, banning gas in newly construction homes, establishing a program for decarbonizing public sector buildings, developing policies to hold the aviation sector to a net-zero emissions target by 2050, and more.

As the BBC reported, the biggest emitters in 2024 for the UK including the building and transportation sectors, but high upfront costs and high electricity costs can limit the amount of people willing to transition to clean energy alternatives, like EVs and heat pumps, particularly for residential buildings. Earlier this week, the UK government announced plans to reduce energy costs for businesses, the BBC reported.

“The Government needs to do more to ensure people see the benefits of climate action in their bills. Given increasingly unstable geopolitics, it is also important to get off unreliable fossil fuels and onto homegrown, renewable energy as quickly as possible,” Forster said. “The fossil fuel era is over — cheap, clean electricity is our future.”