The Seventh Carbon Budget passes into law: What does it mean for solar on flats?

The UK has just taken one of its most ambitious leaps toward a net-zero future. The government has formally set out its proposed level for the Seventh Carbon Budget, locking in a rigorous target to reduce 87% of our greenhouse gas emissions from 2038 to 2042.

Fully endorsed by both the Environmental Audit Committee and the Climate Change Committee (CCC), this milestone provides certainty for investors, businesses and housing providers. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has made it clear that as the country faces volatile international fossil fuel markets, driving clean, homegrown power is the best route to shield family budgets and secure energy security.

But as these climate targets are set, the practical challenge shifts towards the impact on our built environment. The independent CCC has noted that while past emissions cuts were largely achieved by cleaning up the central electricity supply, the next phase relies heavily on complex system changes across our homes.

This raises a big question: How can the UK achieve an 87% reduction if flats are left out of the solar transition?

The consensus among climate experts is that the "low-hanging fruit" of decarbonisation has been exhausted. To hit the deep emission cuts required by the late 2030s, clean energy choices must become practical, affordable and accessible to everyone, not just suburban homeowners.

To date, the UK's rooftop solar boom hasn’t been an equal one. While standalone houses can easily adopt solar panels to insulate themselves from volatile energy prices, flat residents and social housing tenants have been structurally locked out (just 3% of flats have access to solar).

Traditional solar logic dictates that to give an apartment clean energy, you must assign it an isolated segment of the roof, installing a dedicated inverter, individual wiring and an independent utility meter for every single household.

When applied to multi-story properties, this single-home approach presents significant hurdles:

• High-density flat blocks feature a massive ratio of residents relative to the limited roof space. There is physically not enough space to split the roof into dozens of micro-arrays
• Duplicating hardware and labour for every individual flat erodes margins and strains housing budgets
• If the benefits of the clean energy transition remain invisible to renters and vulnerable communities, public trust in net-zero targets will inevitably weaken.

If the UK is to eliminate fossil fuels from domestic buildings, we must rethink how multi-family properties interact with clean tech. This is precisely where Allume Energy's SolShare technology becomes a vital tool for the regulatory roadmap.

Instead of dividing a roof into restricted, inefficient zones, SolShare enables the installation of one single solar array on a rooftop. The hardware then sits centrally between the solar panels and the building’s standard meters.

Through its dynamic allocation capabilities, SolShare routes clean electricity directly to standard consumer units in real-time, matching generation with whichever flats are actively using power at that exact moment. This unlocks solar capability for both retrofits of existing social housing communities and new-build developments seamlessly.

By shifting from a fragmented, individual approach to a shared asset framework, SolShare resolves the core constraints of decarbonising flats:

• It completely removes the need to duplicate infrastructure, individual inverters and separate utility setups, reducing installation costs per flat
• A unified commercial array maximises every square inch of available roof space, capturing the highest possible amount of clean energy for the building
• By routing power straight to households, SolShare delivers tangible co-benefits by cutting tenant electricity bills by up to 40%

The Seventh Carbon Budget is a really historic framework, but its success will depend on whether it delivers for everyone in the UK. For local authorities, private developers and social housing providers, upgrading multi-family infrastructure is no longer an optional project but a core imperative to bridging the clean energy gap.

We must widen the benefits of the transition to ensure no communities are left in the shade.

Are you a housing provider or developer planning your long-term decarbonisation pipeline? Connect with the Allume UK team today to learn how shared solar fits into your carbon reduction targets.