Hybrid heat pump support ‘coming soon’

Government support for hybrid heat pumps is “coming soon”.

Speaking at Utility Week Live, an official from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) confirmed that the government was looking at ways of extending support for heat pumps to hybrid options.

DESNZ heat pump innovation lead Alex Hobley said that ministers are currently looking at how it can support the rollout of hybrid heat pumps via the forthcoming market-based mechanism.

The mechanism, consulted on in 2021, has been proposed to support investment and innovation in transforming the consumer proposition for heat pumps. The government has previously said that it plans to introduce the market-based mechanism for low-carbon heat in the Energy Security Bill.

When quizzed on the role of hybrid heat pumps, Hobley told Utility Week Live delegates to “watch this space”.

He added: “When I first came into the government’s scheme on heat pumps, I could see that there was a lot of positivity around hybrid heat pumps. Over time that positivity has waned somewhat within the department and ministers rightly want to be investing in the technology which is going to make the biggest difference.

“However, I do think there is a role for hybrids and I’ve heard that support for them could be forthcoming via the market mechanism.”

Hobley was speaking after pleas to overhaul the parameters of the boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) from EDF zero carbon heat director Dan Hopcroft and Imperial College London senior research fellow Salvador Acha.

Hobley himself admitted that the “numbers for the BUS are not good and there is no hiding from that”.

During the first round of the BUS, which offers subsidies to consumers for installing heat pumps in their homes, £89.6 million of the £150 million budget went unspent and was clawed back by treasury.

Hopcroft added: “Why is it so hard to spend £150 million? The number of vouchers spent in the first round of the scheme was about a third of what it should have been.

“That is simply not good enough and what is worse is that it is not showing signs of getting better which means that the money for the second and third phase of the scheme will also go unspent. The scheme is simply not working and needs changing now.”

To tackle the problem, Hopcroft called for hybrids to be included as part of the BUS.

He warned that “without hybrids, the government will not spend all the money it has set aside for heat pump installations and it will not achieve its 600,000 installations a year target by 2028”.

“Hybrid is a stepping stone not the ultimate goal,” Hopcroft said. “But it can be a really big driver in sharing that technology with a lot more people.”

Both Hopcroft and Acha also called on the government to make the terms of the scheme more generous to encourage greater uptake.

Hopcroft pointed to the difference between the subsidies offered in England and Scotland and encouraged the UK Government to implement policies that are in place north of the border. This includes raising the subsidy value from £5,000 to £7,500 and offering interest free loans to consumers to cover the remaining costs of installation.

Acha, meanwhile, called on the UK to look at initiatives across the continent which provide greater levels of support.

In particular, he said that schemes rolled out in France, Italy and Sweden were leading to greater public buy-in “because they offer far more generous terms”.

He added: “We are not deaf to the current schemes that the government has put in place. They are good but they need to be much larger and they need to offer much more.”

Last year, the National Infrastructure Commission raised doubts over the plausibility of the government’s heat pump target.

The government has also been urged to drop its target by the Sustainable Energy Association which warns that focussing on a set target of heat pumps could prove counterproductive to efforts to decarbonise the UK’s heating network.