Solar panels to be fitted on all new-build homes in England by 2027

So, so English. The country that doubled down on unbelievably ugly architecture and unbelievably ugly top-down urban planning for decades, to the point they mocked Charles for encouraging more traditional 'village' style developments, has decided it would be best to top down require solar panels. Not incentivize energy efficiency. Not even incentivizing solar, which worked extremely well in Germany. Just some good old predicted-by-Orwell central government decision making.

It's not even clear absolute success would be a net good for English energy. I know almost nothing about English energy, except that it delivers a very expensive product to its customers. In my ignorance, I'd be willing to bet that if England deployed, say, 88GW of solar (Germany's rough numbers), we would be reading about English energy companies requiring bailouts, and then likely increased per kwh charges, given how the regulation / economic management seems to work.

Comments below say that it's 100k GBP to add heat pumps to homes, which I am very, very surprised by. In the Pacific Northwest where I live, a heat pump retrofit is on the order of $18k or 13k GBP. American power costs roughly 1/3 what English power costs on average, and I get that there's therefore a larger savings incentive, and therefore more profit available to installers, but this seems egregious. Y'all, what's happening over there?

A bit absurd considering how cloudy and rainy England is. I'm sure someone else will be complaining about how unaffordable housing has become.

I've looked at a few new builds which also have heat pumps as standard. Looks like the trend is to have a smaller footprint and build upwards (so 3 floors).

Also adds ~100K to cost of new build for customer (which I think is to much), and this is without any battery included, would have thought ideal to pair with solar.

Considering the climate forecast for 2030 the entire world might want to do this. The planet is going to be very worn in 2030.

This was a good idea when introduced by Gordon Brown in 2006 (for implementation in 2016).

And it was still a good idea when the Conservatives short sightedly scrapped it in 2015 along with other "green crap" that would have saved the country Billions.

And it's still a good idea now.

People claiming in comments here that it costs 100K for a heat pump in a brand new house suggest this has entered the culture war insanity stage where facts no longer matter.

The regulations for new houses have been slowly updated but as with anything the tug of war on policy helps no one and long term planning would have been better.