Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Spectators podcast. I'm Kate Andrews,

the Spectators Economics Editor, and I'll be your host for the next half hour as we talk about

greener solutions for heating your home. The government estimates that heating residential homes

accounts for around 15% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions,

so it's understandable that many households are concerned

about the future of their gas boilers

and indeed about their energy bills.

The government laid out its heat and building strategy this October,

but do their plans address these worries?

And if heat pumps and hydrogen boilers are inevitable, can we find a fair way to achieve that green future without excessively burdening the poorest in society?

We'll be discussing all this with three experts in the field. Chris O'Shea is the chief executive officer at Centrica.

Tina Fawcett is the acting leader of the energy research team at the Environmental Change Institute

at the University of Oxford and the co-director at the Center for Research on Energy Demand.

And Jacob Young is the MP for Redcar, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for hydrogen.

This podcast is kindly sponsored by Centrica.

So Jacob, Tina and Chris, thanks so much for joining me.

Chris, why don't you set the scene?

Why is home heating such an important area to tackle in the strategy for achieving net zero?

And our gas boilers really so bad?

Hi, Kate. Well, the reason that it's very important is that if we want to achieve net zero,

we have to deal with all the UK's sources of carbon emissions.

And heat and homes accounts for almost 20% of carbon emissions.

...