UK was worst in Europe for heat pump installations in 2021

The author is Adam Vaughan.

The UK had the worst record in Europe for the installation of heat pumps, a technology that is essential for eliminating the carbon emissions produced by heating homes.

In the UK, just over one heat pump was installed per 1000 households. According to new sales data published by the European Heat Pump Association, Norway had the highest number of installs per household.

A total of 42,779 heat pumps were installed in the UK last year, and the current rate is far below the 15.3 installs per thousand households that the Climate Change Committee said will be needed to reach the country's net zero goal.

A heat pump is a reverse refrigerator that draws its heat from the air or the ground with an electricity- powered pump. The UK government wants to install 600,000 of them every year by the end of the century to replace gas boilers.

The UK came last on installation rates in both 2020 and 2021. The reason for the UK's poor performance is simple, according to the Regulatory Assistance Project. That was one of the factors that led to the lower take up.

He says that most countries with higher deployment of heat pumps have begun to address the electricity and gas price discrepancy. The Netherlands is regularly reviewing the prices of gas and electricity, while the Danes reduced taxation on electricity for heating to almost zero.

The cleanest heating solution should be the most economically attractive according to Thomas Nowak. The introduction of a CO2 price can be used to make this happen.

There are a lot of reasons to think that is not the case. The energy crisis has seen gas costs rise faster than electricity, and the UK government has promised to gradually shift levies paid via electricity bills onto gas bills. The government's boiler upgrade scheme allows households to claim up to £5000 off the price of a heat pump.

UK consumers are more aware of the risks of sticking to fossil fuel for heating, given the fluctuations in price, according to Rosenow.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy says that the new figures are not accurate.