We cut carbon fast because grants gave us wings. But wings are not a flight plan.

Britain has spent the last few years decarbonising the public estate in roughly the same way a teenager revises for exams, last-minute, powered by panic and almost entirely dependent on emergency caffeine or, in our case, grants.

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) was brilliant at what it was meant to be: a national firehose of capital that let councils, hospitals, universities and trusts finally rip out ancient boilers and get heat pumps in the ground before the money vanished again.

But here’s the part everyone inside the sector quietly knows:

Grants are excellent at getting us started.
They are terrible at getting us finished.

Because grants don’t fix the reasons decarbonisation is hard.
They don’t rebalance the gas–electricity price ratio.
They don’t change risk appetite in stretched public estates.
They don’t rewrite business models.
They don’t repair buildings.
They don’t correct decades of under-investment.
And they definitely don’t make a heat pump cheaper to run in a country where electricity is still priced like artisan olive oil.

What grants do is create momentum and then disappear, leaving organisations clutching feasibility studies that only worked when government was paying for half the bill.

And now here we are.

The money has slowed. The carbon hasn’t. The pressure really hasn’t.
Local authorities are still expected to decarbonise ageing estates.
Hospitals still need to cut emissions while growing capacity.
Social housing providers still face thousands of cold, mould-ridden homes.
Universities still need heat that doesn’t break the budget or the boiler.

And that leaves Britain staring at a structural truth:

We are still trying to build a low-carbon future using tools designed for short-term fixes.

We have treated decarbonisation like a charity drive rather than national infrastructure.

And infrastructure built on grants doesn’t endure. It pauses. It waits. It quietly decays in PDF strategies no one ever fully implements.

So the question has changed.

It is no longer, “How do we secure the next pot of money?”
It is now, “What replaces grants when the grants stop?”

Because the future won’t be built on emergency cash injections. It will be built on something sturdier, smarter and far more grown-up. And that’s the truth the sector now needs to face.

What The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) funding solved and what it never could

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme was, in many ways, government at its best: simple, generous, practical and aimed directly at a problem everyone agreed was urgent.

It gave hospitals the modern heat they desperately needed.
It gave councils breathing room.
It dragged boilers out of buildings that should have been in museums.

But it also did something less visible. It shifted the national Overton window.

Heat pumps went from being “new, complicated, slightly frightening” to “the thing that finally stopped the plant room leaking”.

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) proved something important:

When people experience clean heat, they like it.
When organisations are supported to install it, they do it.

But here’s the honest part nobody likes to articulate:

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) was never designed to finish the job.
It was never mathematically capable of doing so.

It was a push, not a plan.

Because grants are great at stimulating action. They are terrible at building systems that survive their absence.

And now that The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) wave has passed, the cracks underneath are fully visible:

• Heat pumps still run on electricity priced like saffron while gas is priced like rice.
• Post-grant business cases collapse when the subsidy leaves the room.
• Many estates still have multiple points of failure and no joined-up thermal strategy.
• Clean heat continues to carry a higher operational cost than fossil heat — a policy mismatch DESNZ openly acknowledges.
• We still lack a mechanism to value the NHS costs avoided when cold, damp homes are finally fixed.

Which leaves the real question hanging:

If grants were the starter motor, what is the engine?

The moment we’re in now: rising demand, shrinking budgets and no safety net

Here’s the uncomfortable reality:

Britain is running out of time, money and excuses at the same moment.

Because when grant funding dries up (and it has) all the underlying problems stay exactly where they were:

Cold homes.
Strained estates.
NHS buildings haemorrhaging energy.
Heat pumps that beat physics but lose to pricing structures.
Councils expected to run 21st-century buildings on 1990s budgets.

Doing nothing is not neutral. Doing nothing is a decision.

And here’s what “nothing” looks like in the real world:

• Thousands of public buildings limping into another decade of inefficiency.
• Social housing providers stuck in retrofit paralysis.
• NHS estates spending more on avoidable energy costs than on some frontline services.
• Developers connecting the easy, shiny buildings because nothing incentivises the harder, human ones.
• Anchor loads left unpaired with the communities that would benefit most.

Meanwhile, the major levers that would naturally support low-carbon heat remain stuck in slow-motion:

• Electricity market reform is still in consultation.
• Local flexibility markets are emerging but inconsistent.
• Carbon pricing still contradicts the actual value of clean heat.
• Heat zoning (coming 2025–2026) still doesn’t guarantee social fairness.

The danger is not doing the wrong thing. The danger is doing nothing at all and hoping another grant scheme will rescue us.

Because it won’t.

So how do we decarbonise when the money stops?

The post-grant era: designing heat that works for life

We don’t need a miracle. We just need to stop designing heat as though one is required.

Decarbonisation will not be built on grants. It will be built on:

• strategy that understands people
• engineering that understands buildings
• economics that understands reality
• systems that understand each other

That is how Britain builds a low-carbon future that survives politics, budgets, winters and whatever else reality throws at it. A future that finally treats heat not as a cost to minimise but as the essential part of life it is.