More than 25 million British homes with gas boilers are a "strategic vulnerability" to UK national security, according to a new report by climate thinktank E3G.
The report, released in late June, calls on the government to launch a "home front mission" to radically change how British energy needs are met.
An 'overwhelming reliance' on gas
"At the heart of British energy policy is the British housing stock. UK homes are overwhelmingly reliant on natural gas and are among the least energy efficient in western Europe," the report said.
It noted that 85 percent of the UK’s roughly 30 million homes are heated by gas boilers, collectively consuming more than one-third of all gas used in the UK annually, around half of which is imported. This reliance on gas for home heating is a security vulnerability in terms of supply security, via international chokepoints subject to instability, and physically due to dependence on centralised critical infrastructure.
The report argued that this "structural reliance" on gas can leave the country exposed to supply disruption and price volatility, a problem worsened by inefficient homes requiring more gas to keep warm.
"In turn, this has significant impacts on individual households and people’s sense of financial agency as well as the state’s ability to provide security to its people," added the study, co-written by Leo Vincent, Faith Hammond, and Dr Pauline Heinrichs.
Ukraine invasion and the cost-of-living crisis
The authors point to the surge in the cost of living after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as a recent example. Within weeks of the invasion, European gas benchmarks surged, up more than 25 percent in the first two weeks, contributing to the UK’s peak inflation rate of 11.1 percent in October 2022, with energy inflation at 59 percent.
That led successive governments to spend £183 billion by November 2025 to try to limit the effects of energy bill increases, including price caps and tax cuts.
Five recommendations
To address the issue, the report sets out five key recommendations, including a "home front mission" to accelerate electrification of UK homes and establish a plan to phase out oil and gas for home heating.
It also calls for a more strategically decentralised, more secure energy system that is harder to impact from abroad, and for gas dependence to be treated as a security threat.
