Public enthusiasm for heat pumps has been overestimated by ministers, putting the Government’s Net Zero goals at risk, spending watchdog the National Audit Office has warned. The Telegraph has more.
The National Audit Office (NAO) found that 27 times more gas boilers were installed in homes in 2022 as taxpayer-funded subsidies failed to spur demand.
In a report published on Monday it said the rollout of heat pumps has been “slower than planned” despite the fact they are a “key component” in meeting climate targets.
It comes just days after Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, scrapped the so-called “boiler tax” which would have fined boiler makers if they failed to meet sales targets for heat pumps.
The policy, which has been delayed until after the election, was meant to encourage adoption but was seen as politically toxic as it would have pushed up the price of gas boilers.
Just 55,000 domestic heat pumps were installed in 2022, the NAO found, which is a fraction of the Government’s longer term aim of 600,000 installations per year by 2030.
By contrast about 1.5 million new gas-fired boilers were installed, mostly to replace worn-out models, even though homeowners could have chosen heat pumps instead.
The Government’s flagship Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which offers homeowners a grant to help them pay for the cost of a heat pump, has also underperformed, the NAO said. Just 18,900 heat pumps were installed between May 2022 and December 2023 under the scheme, less than half of the 50,000 installations that had been expected.
The NAO warned ministers were “relying on optimistic assumptions about consumer demand and manufacturer supply of heat pumps increasing substantially” to hit the 600,000 target.
It also said that to meet the Net Zero target installations would need to carry on rising at pace to reach 1.6 million a year by 2035.
Worth reading in full.
No wonder people don’t want heat pumps, says Ross Clark. They’re unreliable and cost a bomb. Yet they were supposedly going to be cheaper than gas boilers, he reminds us.
[Heat pumps] were all going to slash our bills as we switched from expensive gas to cheap-as-chips renewable energy from wind and solar farms. … Remember how Government grants were supposed to allow the industry to reach a scale at which prices would start to tumble? That’s not quite going according to plan. The average real-terms cost of a heat pump installation has actually risen over the past four years, from £10,328 in 2019 to £11,287 in 2023 (both at 2021 prices). It still costs four times as much to replace a gas boiler with a heat pump than with a like-for-like replacement.
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“Heat Pump Rollout is Failing Because People Don’t Want Them,”
Because there sh!t, that’s why!
4 kw an hour and you can never switch them off!
35°c at best, Wouldn’t warm your hands up!
300mm of insulation, everywhere, at least to make them viable!
Agreed.
We inherited one with the house we bought last year.
And unless the service engineer can point out where we’ve been going wrong – I’ll be replacing it with some fossil fuel-based boiler that actually generates heat.
35°C is a tad warm Dinger.
That’s avg water temperature for the radiators in a heat pump system, literally they’ll feel warm to the touch, not hot.
50 to 60°c is a normal setting for water in a standard gas heating system
Believe it or not 35° is one of the best heat pumps available the rest can’t even manage that!
Thanks for the explanation 👍
We built our own house, so it is very well insulated.
Heat pump provides heating and hot water and temperature of water set around 55.
All working well.
Indeed, they work perfectly well in a well insulated house,one that was built with heat pumps in mind, but that isn’t the vast majority of British housing stock unfortunately!
It may be an idea to actually test the temp of the water in the heating system with a thermometer, as setting it to 55 does not necessarily mean it reaches that temp! In such a well insulated house, the water reaching 55 might well feel too hot and you’d be throwing the windows open😅🥵
Maybe the government could issue heat pump passports and make entry to certain public areas conditional on having a heat pump. They could start an aggressive campaign demonising those who don’t have heat pumps, accusing them of killing other by not having a heat pump.
They already did something similar once before. And it worked…. sort of.
This rings a bell
Then when heat pump owners start to mysteriously die from hyperthermia in a cold winter the Government could deny its happening or blame it on them being racist.
Brilliant! And maybe they could stretch that policy to evs and domestic wind turbines and solar panels?
So if you have the lot your passport will be fully stamped and you can go on holiday abroad on an electric plane!
Killing your grandma by keeping her warm with a gas boiler you terrible person!
How about this for a novel idea for our chosen servants: start serving, stop lording. The more you lecture, the less we listen. Only the brain-dead Guardian readers believe all the BS about the reasons for Net Zero (the same morons that think the Tories are evil, but are bang on the money over Covid, lockdowns, ‘vaccines’ and the climate). Give us facts, cut the crap, and we’ll make a decision. We won’t, however, be ordered to play nicely with our servants under the threat of our servants taking the ball home. It’s well past time that the people reversed the threats and made these self-appointed lords worry.
Actually, that’s exactly what they do. More than half of the money that you earn they literally take away from you in various forms of taxation. They don’t ask, they order you to give it to them. And good luck refusing.
They might not have found the way to make you pay up specifically for heat pumps yet. But they’ll work it out.
All correct of course, hence last sentence.
They tried to ‘roll out’ heat pumps where I live. It was a complete flop because no one wanted them and we were royally pissed off at being picked on as a guinea pig area. Who thought they could bully people into getting heat pumps instead of reliable gas boilers – was it Bunkum Boris? He wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow as we say round here.
Sick, sick, sick of the morons in Westminster & Whitehall jumping on false panic bandwagons and expecting the rest of us to run behind panting with gratitude and eager compliance.
‘Non-compliance, rejection of nonsense and persistent resistance’ should be our rallying cry.
“Public enthusiasm for heat pumps has been overestimated by ministers”
I doubt that minister have done any “estimate” of “public enthusiasm”. I imagine they simply don’t care. They will be imposed because global boiling/climate collapse.
The politicians did not even check their own enthusiasm. Heat pumps are a crucial part of Net Zero because there are 21 million gas boilers in the UK. But there was no debate about Net Zero and no vote. I recall when Grant Schapps who was then Energy Security and Net Zero Minister (or whatever his title was) was asked about 6 months ago on GB News “Are heat pumps any good”? ——His quite remarkable reply was” I don’t know but I am having one fitted in my house soon so I will be finding out” —–What a blithering idiot. Him and his government want 21 million households to spend chunks of money getting rid of their great gas central heating and installing a heat pump but the so called Energy Minister cannot tell us if they are any good. —The truth is that they do not give a hoot if they are any good and they are going to fob us off with them anyway if they can get away with it so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the UN
I wonder how many ministers have got heat pumps?
Maybe none, maybe all of them. Probably if you have a huge house you can afford to put loads of them in and you might get enough heat and be able to afford the heating bills. If you’re fairly rich as all ministers will be, your energy bills are probably not an issue. My guess is none though, at least not in any home where they pay the bills rather than the taxpayer.
MP’s don’t pay for domestic heating.
That figures. My guess too is that even when they cease to be MPs, they can go into highly paid work which means that even high energy bills are not a problem for them.
They will be imposed because the UN and WEF demand it.
“The policy, which has been delayed until after the election…” – a minor correction, perhaps: ‘The policy in the election manifesto…’
I think even the dimmest Tory Minster now realise their ‘handling’ of Covid was p/poor, and they certainly would have benefited from a ‘Red Team’ to challenge their (unscientific) preconceptions.
And yet here they are a couple of years on, making all the same mistakes again. Sticking with the ‘international consensus’, demonising the truth tellers, ignoring the actual science. They have learnt nothing.
The Tories need to be obliterated. Labour will be awful of course, but they will experience an even bigger pushback as people wake up. I think things will look grim for them within months. I have a sneaking feeling that any Party standing against Net Zero will be doing well quite soon.
You refer to “mistakes”. It was pretty obvious that the senior leadership knew “covid” was not a threat. What happened was not “mistake”. What they have learnt is that they over-reached with “covid”.
What politicians fail to realise is that most people do not give a s..t about carbon emissions or climate targets etc. They want cheap reliable energy, and a warm house. So the priorities of the political class are at odds with the general public (or at least the ones that have not been brainwashed with climate crisis propaganda). I am sitting here right now typing this post and my living room is at a comfortable 20C. I have a remote control I can nudge up to 21C if required and my gas central heating is the best heating system people ever had. I don’t particularly want to rip all of that out at great expense and clutter and stick in a heat pump that will from what I can tell have to be running day and night and be more expensive and less reliable than what I already have just because silly governments want to pretend to save the planet. But the problem is that the silly governments are forcing us all in law to meet their daft climate targets and we may be able to avoid the smart meters, heat pumps, electric cars etc for a while but as is the case with everything GREEN, first comes the nudge, then comes the push and we will be forced to do it all in the end because it is the LAW.
Yup the looney law which stated that all rented properties in the Uk must have a heat pump installed or face a £15,000 fine or imprisonment. This was due to come into force in 2025 but has been delayed to 2035.
Furthermore all rented properties have to install some form of cental heating. I rent out a small two bedroom house that has been extensively insulated and has two gas fires downstairs, no central heating needed.
Needless to say I will not instal central heating and will sell the house. The letting agent old me that this stupid law on central heating will mean a big reduction in rental properties thus fuelling the homeless situation even more.
Interesting
How about a checklist for politicians, civil servants, global do-gooders, etc. you’re not allowed to peach to the rest of us unless you have; a smart meter, heat pump, solar / wind power, energy storage, lower than average air miles, eat food in season not flown acroos the globe, etc.
Every time one of them pontificates about the above, lets call them out!
Unfortunately the article doesn’t mention whether the people complaining about lack of adoption have actually had one installed themselves
I speak from experience: for a three or four bedroom house, if you want an indoor temperature of at least 20C down to -7C outside, you need an air/water heat pump much bigger than illustrated, with a double fan. And double the noise – particularly at night, in Winter. Three phase power supply also helps.
A hot water storage heater with electric immersion heater will also be required.
👍 bang on!
Crikey.
I think the writer has fallen into the traditional Telegraph trap of assuming everyone is very rich, and therefore whether to buy a heat pump or gas boiler, (or ICE vs EV) is just a matter of personal choice.
£11,000 to install one ….. and £20,000 to upgrade insulation in a standard 3-bed house so that it provides a fairly warm background heat which will need to be supported by an alternative source (ie a fire) when it gets really cold.
Oh, and when we get the power cuts which are inevitably coming thanks to the Net Zero lunacy, they’ll just stop working.
“cheap-as-chips renewable energy from wind and solar farms. …”
I’m old enough to remember when Nuclear power was going to be so cheap it wouldn’t be worth metering – then the cost of construction put an end to that idea!
The dismal take up rate on heat pumps will surely only get worse as those keen (daft) enough and can afford it have installed units which should last 10 or more years. So the number of new households available to sell to will fall.
It’s not just the high cost (even with grants) but the disruption of installation and finding somewhere for a hot water cylinder in retro fits. In brand new housing, well insulated, it probably works – provided we have enough gas powered generation to run them.
A technology that gets less efficient with decreasing ambient temp is not something to rely on for winter heating. They require expert installation and tweaking in appropriately insulated houses plus cheap elec. But in insulated houses a gas boiler would still win because you can ramp up the heating only when needed and quickly, unlike heat pumps that have to run for far longer at lower temps to keep the efficiency high. Air to air mini-splits may have a role as can just be turned on/off but don’t do hot water.
Excellent.
Let us all say know to these ridiculous CCC and Government net zero policies.
Climate change nonsense.