Why are UK homes so rubbish at staying warm? We asked the experts

A cold snap has swept across the UK this week, with temperatures plummeting to lows of -11c in some parts of the country.

These low temperatures are set to continue, with the Met Office issuing another weather warning as Storm Bert brings in 70mph winds, rain and snow this weekend.

While the lower-than-average temperatures continue, many of us are still hesitant to turn up the thermostat thanks to skyrocketing energy bills.

Even when we do crank up the heating, many find it difficult to keep the warmth inside leaving us reaching for an extra jumper or spare blanket.

So what is it about the UK's heating system that leaves so many of us wanting? Here's what we know about why the UK is so rubbish at heatings its homes properly, the challenges it faces, and how we make it fit for purpose.

Damp and old housing

The UK has some of the oldest and least energy efficient housing stock in Europe.

One third of UK homes were built before 1946, according to think-tank the Resolution Foundation, long before heating became commonplace in our homes in the 1970s.

Because of this, we lose heat in our homes faster than our European neighbours.

"We do have a relatively old housing stock compared to some European countries. Because of this, the homes on average are less energy efficient," Dr Neil Simcock, an energy expert and Geography lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, tells Yahoo News.

"As they're less insulated, they leak out heat more rapidly. That means you have to be heating on a bit more. So you use more, and then that costs you more," he added.

This problem is even more pronounced in the private rental sector.

“Landlords don't have an incentive because they're not the ones paying the energy bills," Dr Gareth Thomas, a research associate at Cardiff University, told Yahoo News.“Given the housing crisis, and the fact that there are more people looking for homes than there are homes available, it doesn’t harm their ability to rent out properties."

Old, inefficient boilers that "should have been replaced years ago" are also "quietly draining away money" says Becky Lane, who is the co-owner of retrofit start-up Furbnow, which helps homeowners reduce carbon emissions.

"Boilers that really should have been replaced years ago – what we call 'zombie boilers' – are quietly draining money from millions of British households," she said. "These ancient heating systems typically operate at around 70% efficiency or worse, meaning for every pound spent on gas, 30p is simply wasted. Modern condensing boilers, by comparison, are over 90% efficient."

Poor walls

The quality of insulation within our homes is a big factor, too. Houses in the UK are not just old, but they are leaky.

In 2022, nine million homes — one in four — had walls that were rated as poor.

It will come as little surprise that this has a knock-on effect on how energy efficient our homes are. In England and in Wales, houses have a median energy efficiency rating of band D.

These lower figures doesn't just affect older, high-ceilinged Edwardian homes. Only 1.8% of new homes in England meet the highest energy efficiency rating, Greenpeace research has shown.

Attempts to accelerate this weren't helped when plans to make all new homes in the UK carbon neutral were scrapped in 2015. This means that even some of the newest homes are still lagging significantly behind in the efficiency ratings.

“We've not been as on it with energy efficiency upgrades as we should have been over the last 10 years," Thomas said. “We were doing quite well on insulation up until about 2010-2015, when most of the government subsidies for that were all massively cut back.

This was when the Conservatives started to dip in the polls halfway through Cameron’s first administration, prompting government advisors to ask them to win over voters by “cutting the green crap”.

While the government's approval ratings were saved, Thomas believes the cuts were "pretty short-sighted."

“It would have saved quite a lot of money during the more recent energy price crisis," he added. “The policies to do this work were in place and while they weren't perfect, but progress was being made."

Energy is very expensive

Even though heating our homes can be a struggle, the UK now pays the highest electricity prices in the world — four times the price of the average bill in the US.

The energy price cap is predicted to rise by another 1.2% in January, making the average household energy bill £1738.

Gas prices are not much better. "We're massively over reliant on natural gas," Thomas said. "Other countries have a more diverse selection of heating sources being used in homes.

"Natural gas was great for the country in the sixties and seventies. When we found North Sea gas, we had comparatively cheap home heating bills for a number of years.

“But now North Sea reserves are dwindling down and we're more reliant on international oil and gas markets. Things like the war in Ukraine affect us very badly."

The price increases ties to gas and electricity have been devastating for many UK households.

"There’s 3 million people that struggle in the overlap between living on the lowest incomes but also living in the least energy efficient homes," Peter Smith, the policy director at National Energy Action told Yahoo News.

"Those households are not only living with often inefficient, elderly – and in some instances, dangerous heating systems – but they're also living in properties which haven't been insulated and the basic energy efficiency measures, like insulation," Smith added.

"A third of people are in arrears with their energy supplier," Simcock said.

"The average household in arrears owes about £1500 pounds for electricity and £1300 for gas."

Professor Mari Martiskainen, the director of the Energy Demand Research Centre, has heard first-hand some of the devastating effects of the energy price hikes that have affected the UK over the last three years.

"We are hearing from people that they will only heat one room of the house. We've heard from parents who will give their bedroom to their children, and they themselves perhaps need to sleep in the living room, so that they only have to heat one room or two rooms," Martiskainen told Yahoo News.

“We are a G7 country, one of the most wealthy countries in the world. So how is it that we are allowing six million households to live in fuel poverty?" she added.

What are the alternatives?

So, if the current system to heat our homes isn't working, what are the alternatives?

Many of the experts Yahoo News spoke to voiced their support for installing heat pumps.

Last October, the government rolled out the Boiler Upgrade Scheme heat pump grant, increasing it to £7,500 for households looking to install air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps.

"The most efficient way to heat most homes is through heat pumps," Professor of Energy Policy Aimee Ambrose at Sheffield Hallam University told Yahoo News.

"They generate much more heat per each unit of energy put into them than any other form of heating available to us. However, they can seem expensive compared to gas boilers but it should be kept in mind that they are likely to last longer than a gas boiler," she added.

While they're a step in the right direction, Thomas points out that there's not a lot of "reliable information out there" about them.

"When we moved to gas heating, there were gas shops in every town. It was run by the national gas board and everyone kind of knew that was where you went for advice on this stuff. We don't have that face-to-face advice right now," he added.

Another option is district heating.

“District heating heats half of Paris and is in use quite a lot in parts of Scandinavia and parts of eastern Europe,” Thomas explained. “It is essentially where you have one massive boiler or – in the future – a massive heat pump producing very large quantities of heat that's then pumped directly into people's homes through underground pipes.

"You don't have the heating source in your home, hot water is directly pumped into your home."

The system has already had success in Aberdeenshire, where a successful social housing trial means that the heating is paid as part of the rent.

"It's an option that tends to get overlooked, but it has a lot of potential," Thomas added.

“District heating is good in a way that usually it's more efficient, so there's a lot less sort of losses in that system, but it hasn't really taken off in the UK that much yet," Martiskainen said.

“Partly, it's also a cultural thing. People in the UK really tend to like their gas boilers and their individual heating systems because they might have not been used to that communal heating system.”

For heating engineer Lee Moio who runs Heatlab, a plumbing and heating tool vendor, hydrogen heating is the way forward.

"I think in the future, we're probably just going to move on to hydrogen," he told Yahoo News. "At the moment, it costs more electricity to make one kilowatt of hydrogen than what you get out of it. So it's just figuring out how to make it cheap enough," he added.

It's a view the government has shared too — even though many of its projects have been delayed.

The third pilot of a "hydrogen town", where hydrogen heating would be tested in homes, was culled by the government in May. While hydrogen "may have a role to play" in cutting heating emissions, it will be in "a slower time in some locations", likely 2026.

Thomas does warn, however, that installing them can be "very controversial", and come with a number of risks.

"The trickiest thing I think with hydrogen is you need to convert whole streets and neighbourhoods all in one. You can't put hydrogen on one street and natural gas on another," he added.

Simcock is keen to point out that the struggle to heat our homes is not just an energy problem, but a "welfare problem".

Bringing in an energy social tariff and universal basic energy could mean that every household can house their home a lot more easily.

"It’s a housing problem, and it’s about economic policy as well. It's all of the issues of the last 14 years coming to a head. We can't see energy in a silo," he added.