UK's gas boiler dependency a growing national security concern, say experts

More than 25 million UK homes heated by gas boilers have been described by climate thinktank E3G as a national security weakness, in a report that argues Britain’s dependence on gas leaves households exposed to supply shocks and price swings. The group says the country’s housing stock remains overwhelmingly tied to natural gas, despite longstanding warnings over efficiency and resilience.

E3G says around 85% of Britain’s 30 million homes still rely on gas boilers, and that those properties account for more than a third of all gas used in the UK each year. Roughly half of that fuel is imported, leaving the country vulnerable to disruption in international trade routes and to instability in global markets. The report argues that this dependence is not just an energy problem, but a strategic one.

The thinktank points to the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as a stark example of that vulnerability. European gas prices surged within weeks, feeding through into domestic inflation and helping push UK inflation to 11.1% in October 2022, with energy inflation reaching 59%, according to the analysis. E3G says successive governments spent £183 billion by November 2025 trying to cushion households from higher bills through measures such as price caps and tax cuts.

To reduce the risk, the report calls for a ‘home front mission’ to accelerate the electrification of homes and set a clear path away from oil and gas for heating. It also urges ministers to build a more decentralised energy system, one that would be harder to disrupt from abroad, and to treat dependence on gas as a security issue rather than only a consumer-cost problem. E3G has separately argued that heat pumps could cut household heating bills, while a wider push for insulation and electric heating has also been backed by green business groups pressing the government to protect related funding.