Owen Coyle: Heating oil’s ticking clock - why rural communities can’t wait for the energy transition

As energy prices surge amid ongoing Middle East conflict, the real cost of inaction on rural decarbonisation is becoming impossible to ignore.
There is deep and growing concern about the impact of soaring heating oil prices on rural communities. Around 1.5 million households across the UK including more than 140,000 in Scotland, rely on heating oil, the vast majority in rural and island areas.

As energy markets are buffeted by conflict in the Middle East, the cost of keeping a home warm has become a source of genuine anxiety for hundreds of thousands of households. But the conversation, too often framed around fuel poverty, is missing a more urgent point: this is also a question of energy security.

Many rural communities are not connected to the gas grid. They depend on heating oil, a commodity subject to changes in global markets and geopolitical instability. The current debate centres on whether people can afford to fill their tanks, but what happens if the oil simply isn’t there? A serious supply disruption would leave households with elderly and vulnerable residents facing winter without heat. That is not a hypothetical - it is a foreseeable crisis for which too little preparation is being made.

There has never been a stronger case for mass installation of heat pumps. Electrification of heat severs the link between a household’s warmth and the price of oil, offering certainty that fossil fuels cannot deliver.

The ECO scheme and other home energy-efficiency schemes have helped fund measures such as insultation and heat pumps for low income or vulnerable households, while the UK Government’s recently published Warm Homes Plan sets out the longer-term direction for upgrading homes. In Scotland, progress will also depend on the next phase of the Heat in Buildings programme, with legislation expected to return after the Scottish Parliament elections in May.

These programmes were designed with decarbonisation in mind. While that remains a vital goal, the energy security challenge adds a new urgency. We can no longer afford a leisurely transition. Communities across rural Britain need reliable, affordable access to energy, both heating and electricity, and they need it now.

We know this works. Over the past decade, we have retrofitted thousands of rural homes with insulation, solar panels, heat pumps and battery storage. Last year, at Caol near Fort William, we completed a project in partnership with Highland Council to upgrade more than 100 homes.

Built from Swedish timber as a temporary post-war solution, these properties were designed to stand for 20 years yet were still occupied 80 years later because of the chronic housing shortage in rural Scotland. Now fully refurbished, residents report a massive improvement in comfort. Homes heat up faster, stay warmer for longer, and bills have fallen significantly.

Crucially, those residents are no longer exposed to oil price shocks or supply risk. Their heating is electrified, they are connected to the grid, and solar panels with battery storage mitigate electricity costs. These people have energy security. Their neighbours who remain on heating oil do not.

Upgrading inefficient housing is good for everyone - for residents, for the environment, and for the construction industry. While the ambition shown in the UK Government’s Warm Homes Plan is welcome, ambition alone does not insulate homes or install heat pumps. What is needed now is the funding, deployed quickly and without the transitional gaps that have already cost thousands of jobs across the sector. The sector is ready to get to work. It is time to release the money, and provide people with warm, safe, affordable homes.