The lacklustre take-up of heat pumps reflects some familiar problems in British public policy, from perverse tax incentives and skills shortages to restrictive planning laws and government indecisiveness
. Home heating accounts for 14% of Britain’s total carbon emissions. The 43,000 heat-pump sales in 2021, the latest year for which full figures are available, falls far short of the rate of 600,000 per year by 2028 which the government has targeted.
Heat pumps, however, typically provide less heat and work most efficiently in well-insulated homes. They often require water-storage tanks, too, which have over the past few decades been replaced across the country by combination boilers. As a result, putting in a heat pump can often require expensive refitting. “There’s no doubt that installing heat pumps in theis a bit more challenging,” says Andrew Sissons, an economist at Nesta, an innovation foundation.
Start with the tax system. According to an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies , a think-tank, Britain has in effect had a negative carbon tax on gas for home heating—even before the current subsidies brought in after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most of the taxes designed to subsidise the installation of renewable energy are levied on electricity.
Finding an installer is even tougher. According to Nesta there are roughly 3,000 trained heat-pump engineers in Britain; the industry needs to add another 27,000 by the end of this decade. That will be very difficult. The average British boiler engineer is 56 years old, and unlikely to learn new tricks. The typical outfit is either a sole trader or a small business, often relying on manufacturers for training.
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