Heat pumps are being hailed as the solution to the U.K.’s decarbonising its homes by 2035 when a ban on the sale of new gas boilers kicks in. But their expense, noise, high costs and installation challenges are just some of the hurdles they need to overcome if they are to meet the Government’s ambitious targets. The BBC has more.
The way we heat our homes is changing.
As the world moves away from fossil fuels, we will be saying goodbye to our gas fires and boilers – and instead electrifying the heating systems in our homes.
Extinguishing the fires in our homes is a big change, human beings evolved around the comfort of a campfire.
So, what will this mean for you – and the systems that deliver the energy we depend upon?
In just 12 years’ time you won’t be able to buy a gas boiler any more.
The Government has ordered that sales of new ones will be banned from 2035.
Heating our homes accounts for as much as 16% of the U.K.’s planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions.
The front-runner in the race to replace our boilers is undoubtedly the heat pump.
There is a very simple reason why – they are extraordinarily efficient.
They cost more than gas boilers, but for every unit of energy you put in, you get up to three units of heat out.
Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, it is not quite as simple as that.
Heat pumps produce hot water at lower temperatures than gas boilers.
That means to get the heat into your home, it is a good idea to have bigger radiators.
And you will keep more of the heat in if your home is well-insulated and has double glazing. But doing that additional work can massively add to your costs.
Typically it costs £10,000 to buy and install a heat pump.
And there is another issue.
Unit for unit, electricity typically costs three times as much as gas.
That means even though your new heat pump is three times as efficient as your gas boiler it costs about the same to run.
There’s a £5,000 grant to help householders with the costs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland is more generous, it offers £7,500.
But critics say that is not enough and that people need more help if the Government is going to get anywhere near its target of 600,000 new heat pump installations every year by 2028.
At current rates of installation, it will take more than 400 years before every British home has a heat pump.
So far fewer than 12,000 grants have been cashed – perhaps because it only covers the cost of the pump itself, and not the installation.
And even if households are able to pay, there is another barrier to hitting the Government’s heat pump targets.
The U.K. only has 4,000 trained heat-pump installers – it is estimated we will need 33,000 by 2028.
There are other electric heating systems – immersion boilers, electric fires, fan heaters and infra-red radiators, for example – but none of these is as efficient as heat pumps.
They are just like your existing gas boiler – so no need for a new set of radiators – except that they burn hydrogen instead of natural gas.
But using hydrogen has its problems – for a start, where would it all come from?
Most of the readily available hydrogen is locked up in the water of our oceans.
The cleanest and greenest way to produce it would be to use electricity, through a process called electrolysis – but most of the time it would be more efficient just to use that electricity to heat our homes with heat pumps.
We could produce hydrogen from the natural gas we currently use, but we would then have to find a way to stop all the carbon dioxide (CO2) the process produces from going into the atmosphere.
The CO2 could be captured and pumped underground – but that is expensive and has never been done at scale before.
What is more, hydrogen boilers have not proved popular with the public.
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