The boss of British Gas parent company Centrica said the UK needs 40,000 new engineers to turn the country’s heating systems green.

Centrica CEO Chris O’Shea told an audience at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow that his business was hiring the equivalent of one new apprentice every day this decade, as it tries to retrofit millions of homes across the UK with hydrogen boilers and heat pumps.

He said 10 times that number would be needed to help with the UK’s broader green heating agenda.

Back in September Mr O’Shea told BusinessLive Centrica was creating 3,500 engineering apprenticeships over the coming decade at four UK training academies to meet the changing nature of its business.

He said a third of the 650 or so recruits taken on so far were female – compared to a previous figure of just eight per cent of the engineering workforce. The ambition is for half of all new recruits to be women.

British Gas has training centres in Dartford, Hamilton, Thatcham and Leicester, and the new workers – called “Smart Energy Experts” – will install and maintain carbon-efficient technologies including electric vehicle charging points, heat pumps and hydrogen boilers.

Mr O’Shea said British Gas already sells 100 per cent renewable and nuclear electricity and is planning to replace traditional gas with hydrogen, which he said can be used in much the same way but without the dirty by-products.

He told the Cop26 audience the cost of heat pumps would come down as with other green technologies in recent decades.

However he cautioned against assuming that prices will fall just because the UK was starting to install more of them.

He said France has been using heat pumps for years, but prices are still high.

He said: “Heat pumps are expensive but they are a critical part of what we need to do.”

Centrica is aiming to install up to 20,000 heat pumps every year by the middle of the decade.

The Government has backed heat pumps as a way to make sure households are heated in a more environmentally friendly way.

Heat pumps work like a reverse air conditioner, by moving heat from outside a home to inside. They run on electricity, so if they are supplied with renewable electricity they can be very green.

Despite Government backing, heat pumps should not be installed at the taxpayer’s expense, Mr O’Shea said.

He said: “We have to avoid putting the burden on the Government.”