Here in the UK, the Government is trying to persuade householders to replace their gas boilers with heat pumps. It’s a key part of their net zero strategy, tackling the 13% of CO2 emissions that are attributable to gas-based home heating. The “one size fits all” message is “Heat Pumps Good, Gas Boilers Bad”. The Government has set a target of installing 600,000 heat pumps each year by 2028, rising to 1.6 million annually by 2028. To help achieve this, they have introduced a Boiler Upgrade subsidy, but the latest Government statistics show that only 16,959 applicants have replaced an existing gas boiler with a heat pump since the scheme began in May 2022, which is a little bit short of the 1.4 million target for that period
These targets were set without much understanding of the difficulty or cost of retrofitting heat pumps. Much of Britain’s housing is old and not very suitable for conversion. Having set the policy, the Government initiated a major study in 2019 called DEEP – the Demonstration of Energy Efficient Potential, to provide evidence to justify it. DEEP’s remit was to quantify the real effects, costs and returns of upgrading the structure of older houses. They’ve just published the results, which basically says it’s not economic for these older properties. It suggests that the payback time for heat pumps in older homes, along with the insulation upgrade to make them suitable is “generally over 100 years”. So, where does that leave the plan?