55-60% of the average UK home’s energy bills go toward fuelling its boiler, and if yours is old and inefficient you could be adding as much as £200 to your annual utility costs.
The government used to a run a scheme that gave households with the least efficient, G-rated boilers a discount on a new, high efficiency boiler, in the form of a £400 voucher issued by the Energy Savings Trust.
The Boiler Scrappage Scheme has been discontinued but there’s other assistance available for people with inefficient boilers, to help them reduce their energy bills and carbon emissions.
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The £50 million Boiler Scrappage Scheme was launched in 2010 to help 125,000 households in England with the least efficient G-rated boilers – those which received the worst efficiency grade under the Energy related Products (ErP) directive.
It operated much like a car scrappage scheme, which gives people money for their old, polluting vehicles that they could then put toward the purchase of a cleaner and more efficient car.
The Boiler Scrappage Scheme gave eligible households a £400 discount on the purchase and installation of a new A-rated boiler, delivered as a rebate from the Energy Savings Trust. It helped tens of thousands of households upgrade to more efficient and cost-effective boilers, cutting their energy bills and carbon emissions.
Additionally, some energy suppliers, including Big Six companies British Gas and Npower, matched the rebate, potentially giving their customers £800 off the cost of a new boiler.
The scheme has since closed.
Homeowners and landlords with G-rated boilers living in England qualified for the scheme. Tenants could only get their boiler replaced if their landlord participated in the scheme.
G-rated boilers are those which earn the lowest grade under the ErP directive, indicating they’re less than 70% efficient. These are typically boilers over 15 years old with a pilot light that doesn’t go out. You can consult a search engine to find the efficiency rating of your boiler.
Under the scrappage scheme, these boilers had to be replaced with new models with at least an A efficiency rating, indicating they were more than 92% efficient.
The cost of purchasing and installing a new boiler averages more than £2,500 – a hefty sum even with a discount via the old Boiler Scrappage Scheme. But households running the least efficient boilers could find savings on their energy bills in just a few years that offset this initial cost. Additionally, they’ll be reducing their impact on the environment by using less gas.
Your boiler doesn’t need to be G-rated for it make financial and environmental sense to replace it. If your current boiler is rated D or worse, it could be worth replacing.
You make find the following savings on your energy bill by replacing a poorly performing boiler with an A-rated one, based on your old boiler and size of your property:
| Type of property | Grade G boiler (<70% efficient) | Grade F boiler
(70-74% efficient) |
Grade E boiler (74-78% efficient) | Grade D boiler
(78-82% efficient) |
| Mid-floor apartment | £95 | £65 | £50 | £25 |
| Mid-terrace house | £175 | £120 | £95 | £70 |
| Semi-detached house | £215 | £145 | £115 | £85 |
| Detached house | £350 | £240 | £190 | £140 |
The Energy Savings Trust found that upgrading to an energy efficient boiler could save households up £200 on their energy bills and reduce their CO2 emissions by 140,000 tonnes. In fact, if every home in the UK had a high efficiency condensing boiler with heating controls, we’d cumulatively save enough energy to heat 1.9 million homes for a year and would keep 6.7 million tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere.
You’ll also save yourself the costs of emergency repairs of any old boiler that stops working.
Although the Boiler Scrappage scheme has been discontinued, you can still find assistance to help you defray the cost of replacing an ageing boiler.
If you can’t afford to replace your boiler, you can make smaller changes, to your property and habits, to reduce your energy usage, bills, and carbon footprint. Install loft or wall insulation, block draughts, get double-glazed windows, turn down the thermostat by just one degree Celsius, or invest in a smart thermostat and timers.
And some of the largest cost savings can be found via energy comparison and switching – up to £300 a year off your gas and electricity bills if you move to a cheap fixed rate deal.