CCC boss casts doubt on 600,000 heat pump target

It is “hard to see” how the ninefold increase required to meet the government’s 2028 target of 600,000 heat pump installations can be achieved, the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) head of net zero has warned.

David Joffe pointed out that last year’s gas price crisis was a “really good time to get people off gas boilers”, when speaking at the Institute for Government’s net zero conference.

However, the rate of heat pump deployment had been a fraction of that required to meet the government’s 2028 target, he said: “There’s a really important role for heat pumps. We’ve just been through a gas price crisis, yet we only deployed 70,000 (heat pumps) last year because we don’t have a supply chain that could have delivered two, three of four times that.

“The demand was probably there but we just didn’t have the supply chain.”

Joffe added: “It’s hard to see how you will get to that ninefold increase to that 600,000 target.

“We need a long-term view of where we want to get to so that people can actually invest in the skills and capabilities.”

He said home heating was an example of a broader pattern across government of “doing the right things but not necessarily with sufficient urgency”.

Joffe also said an “absolute prerequisite” for achieving this shift to heat pumps is to cut the disparity between the prices of electricity and gas with the former continuing to shoulder policy costs that do not apply to the latter.

Guy Newey, chief executive officer of the Energy Systems Catapult, said: “Until you’ve got the policy framework in place, which is incentivizing low carbon choices and you’re not just relying on the kind of altruism of people who buy green stuff at a premium, you will really struggle.

“It’s only then you will get people really investing in training people, supply chains and things like that. That’s the test of how serious we are about net zero.”

Tom Sasse, associate director at the institute, said the establishment of a dedicated Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) had been “broadly sensible”, noting that the secretary of state for the bigger BEIS (business, energy and industrial strategy) portfolio had only been able to devote about a “tenth” of their time to energy issues.

But he warned that DESNZ is going to “struggle” to co-ordinate action across government, such as in areas like housing and transport, which are under different departments.