3 Million Heat Pumps Needed to Meet Climate Goals

As many as three million heat pumps will need to be fitted in homes across the country over the coming Parliament if the UK is to meet its statutory climate targets, requiring a huge acceleration in the current installation rate, fresh research has warned.

At present tens of millions of UK homes remain reliant on carbon intensive oil or fossil gas boilers to heat their homes, and in order to meet climate goals, Nesta estimates up to one-in-10 will need to switch to a lower carbon alternative such as heat pumps within just five years.

That would require a 12-fold increase on the number of heat pumps installed during the last Parliament, with only 250,000 having been installed in the UK since 2020, leaving some 25.5 million homes still reliant on fossil gas or oil boilers to keep warm, according to the charity.

Thanks to sluggish policy support and numerous U-turns over heat pumps, gas boilers and household energy efficiency under the previous government, Nesta said the UK was now far off track to meeting its own targets, including a goal to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028.

Nesta said a fresh approach was therefore needed to accelerate heating decarbonisation in the UK, driven by an overall aim to ensure the lifetime costs of buying and operating a heat pump or other low carbon heating system reach cost parity with that of fossil gas boilers, if not cheaper, as soon as possible.

Madeleine Gabriel, director of sustainable future at Nesta, urged the new government to

“reverse the drift away from energy policies that ensured we would meet the UK’s net zero targets”.

She stressed that there was still time to change course “and much can be accomplished rapidly”.

“It has inherited a big problem on home heating and will need to take urgent action,” Gabriel said. “But it will require a major switching of gears to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. We know that rapidly transforming home heating is possible – we did it in the 60s and 70s and we can do it again now.”

Home heating is responsible for 14 per cent of the UK’s total carbon emissions, with gas boilers the leading culprit, and without action the country is facing a 15 per cent shortfall in the emissions savings needed to keep the country within statutory carbon budgets, Nesta said.

However, Nesta’s new report today sets out recommendations for a new approach driven by several rapid actions to deliver low carbon heating across the UK, which the innovation charity argues could be embarked on by the government almost straight away.

These actions include setting up a new national agency to administer and drive forward the government’s heat and efficiency grant and support schemes, backed by further support for local councils to help deliver the green heat transition locally, it said.

Neighbourhood delivery schemes could help many homes in a single area to switch to low carbon heating at the same time, it added, while the establishment of a new national agency to administer and push forward the government’s existing heat and efficiency funding schemes could also drive further change, according to Nesta.

The charity also called on the government to act swiftly to rebalance energy bills by shifting some of the policy costs from electricity bills onto gas bills, thereby helping incentivise the shift to lower carbon electric heating.

Finally, Nesta joined the growing chorus of calls for the government to make a final decision on the potential role for hydrogen heating in the UK as soon as possible, and to reform fuel poverty schemes to provide further support for vulnerable households this coming winter.

The previous government said it would make a final decision on what role, if any, hydrogen should have in providing heat for UK homes by 2027. However, several of its planned small-scale hydrogen heating trials faced major opposition from locals, which forced their cancellation, and there are now no further real-world trials set to take place for the technology.

That, alongside growing appetite for electric heat pumps and mounting concerns about the technical and commercial viability of hydrogen heating, has left the government facing growing pressure to clarify that hydrogen should have only a limited role in heating decarbonisation.

At present, however, BusinessGreen understands no decisions have yet been made by the new government on the potential future use of hydrogen for home heating, nor on whether to bring forward its decision deadline to sooner than 2027.

Energy UK’s deputy director, Charles Wood, welcomed Nesta’s report today, as he backed the charity’s calls for a more coordinated approach to accelerate the decarbonisation of homes heating.

“Bold and decisive action is required to give both consumers and industry the confidence to invest,” he said. “Nesta has rightly highlighted some of the most important elements needed for rapid delivery of low carbon heat in collaboration with the wider sector.”

In a statement, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), trumpeted Labour’s manifesto commitment to provide an additional £6.6bn in funding – on top of that already committed by the previous Conservative government – over the course of the coming Parliament to upgrade up to five million homes with insulation and clean energy technologies.

“The energy shocks of recent years have shown the urgent need to upgrade British homes and secure our energy independence,” said DESNZ. “Our Warm Homes Plan will support investment in insulation and low carbon heating – upgrading millions of homes over this Parliament. By providing £13.2bn of investment to deliver this plan, we will cut bills, reduce fuel poverty and get the UK back on track to meet our climate goals.”

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