Only 2% of heat pump installation goal being met

The government is supporting the installation each year of less than two per cent of the heat pumps, which are needed if the UK is to meet its 2050 net zero emissions target, a new report has warned.

The study, published by the IPPR thinktank today (15 July), also says that nearly twice as much will have to be spent on decarbonising buildings as the £3 billion announced in last week’s Summer Statement.

According to an analysis of Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) figures, carried out by the IPPR’s researchers, just 77,000 low-carbon heating measures were installed between April 2014 and January 2020.

Of these, approximately 55,400 were heat pumps, equating to an average annual number of heat pumps installations of 9,233.

In its report, All Hands to the Pump: a clean heat plan for England, the IPPR says this figure  is just 1.5 per cent of the annual average of 628,000 heat pumps that must be installed to reach the 19 million devices that it says will be needed by 2050.

The report says that the government’s flagship fuel poverty programme, the industry financed Energy Company Obligation scheme, is “underfunded, bad at targeting fuel-poor homes and far too slow”.

It also says that the government’s decision to earmark £3 billion for energy efficiency in last week’s Treasury Summer Statement, while welcome, is only a first step and must be extended beyond one year.

To meet the scale of heat decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures required to help hit net zero will require £10.6 billion a year of public and private investment until 2030, and a further £7 billion per annum in the following two decades.

The report recommends that the government should fund half of this through a £5.3 billion Retrofit Fund, which would support the installation of heat pumps and energy efficiency measures.

Of this sum, it says £1.8 billion should be committed to the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, promised by the government in last year’s Conservative manifesto, every year until 2030.

The report concludes that both heat pumps and hydrogen boilers will be needed to achieve the decarbonisation of the UK’s housing stock.

However, it says that pumps, installed in tandem with heat networks and energy efficiency measures, should be prioritised for government support as they will be the “dominant technology” for decarbonising home heating.

The report says that heat pumps are already available and that while the wider roll out of hydrogen is possible, it is a far from “shovel-ready” with the supply chain for manufacturing hydrogen requiring a substantial and rapid scale-up in investment in infrastructure.

Another problem for hydrogen, the report says, is that further technological innovation is required to ensure that it is genuinely zero-carbon.

In addition, scaling up hydrogen production would require a 60 per cent increase in natural gas imports that would imperil the UK’s energy security, while potentially increasing households’ bills.

The report also says all households requiring boiler replacements should be signposted towards alternative low-carbon heat solutions.

Where the installation of heat pumps is not possible, such as in high rise blocks, the use of hydrogen boilers and high heat retention storage heaters, should be the preferred option though.

However, the IPPR says that a mass energy efficiency and low-carbon heat programme could deliver huge benefits for the economy, including the creation of up to 275,000 jobs in England and 325,000 across the UK.

And it says that the government’s proposal for a Clean Heat Grant for heat pumps, which would replace the existing domestic RHI (renewable heat incentive) scheme, would cost the poorest households up to 60 per cent of their average annual income.

Joshua Emden, IPPR research fellow, said: “The government’s announcement on energy efficiency was a very welcome step in the right direction. But we also need to focus on scaling up the low-carbon technologies that will heat our homes, not just making them more efficient.

“A new Home Improvement Plan would maximise the potential for savings on energy bills by going further on the good work that’s been done on energy efficiency and pairing this with low-carbon heating technologies like heat pumps.”