Written Answers from the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero – heat pumps

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (184253):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, if his Department has made an estimate of the take up rate for heat pumps in existing dwellings up to 2030. (184253)

Tabled on: 10 May 2023

Answer:
Graham Stuart:

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero estimates that current and proposed policies could support total retrofit heat pump uptake of around 60,000 in FY24/25, 90,000 in FY25/26, 150,000 in FY26/27, 250,000 in FY27/28, 400,000 in FY28/29 and between 500,000 – 700,000 in 2030.

The answer was submitted on 18 May 2023 at 16:38.

28 Comments

  1. Mark B
    May 21, 2023

    Good morning.

    ‘Estimates’ and ‘could. Two words that do not give me with much hope.

  2. Lifelogic
    May 21, 2023

    So where is the (low carbon?) electricity coming from for these 1,650,000 heat pumps they will need about 8 GWH PA.
    Also who will pay from them a retro fit in a three bed house is going to cost about ÂŁ30,000 (so circa ÂŁ50 billion) and the grid and generation capacity will need huge improvements too on top of this.

    True you might get and average of circa two times the heat out for every KWH of electricity in but electricity costs more than three times as much as gas should do (in an unrigged market). So cost more to run, vastly more to install, more to maintain and is less convenience needing bigger tepid rads and struggles to give decent hot water temps efficiently too.

    Coming back to the hydrogen electricity is worth three times what gas is as it is far more flexible yet with green hydrogen they are going to very expensively convert it back to gas worth less than 1/3 of electricity and wasting much of the energy in the process. Great plan from Grant Shapps with his 5 ‘O’ Levels, and his Poly Higher National Diploma in business!

    1. Cuibono
      May 21, 2023

      +many
      I swear LL they will have us on special elec-generating bikes (24/7) and ship all our exhalations off to China to make it a carbon neutral process!

      In the West we had it made, by our own efforts …and the politicians just wilfully chucked it away.
      Probably following some weird philosophy or other about how Europe should just throw in the towel and concede defeat. ( Fanon or the like maybe?).

    2. graham1946
      May 21, 2023

      Shapps, the man who thinks ‘smart motorways’ are safe – so safe that the government has now stopped doing any more of them. He’s a dud, but then PM’s like duds – it saves them from challenge.

  3. Cuibono
    May 21, 2023

    I think that we inadvertently got a heat pump ( for the cooling function) installed during the Great Imprisonment.
    It was to avoid opening windows in the heat of the summer because our charity rental neighbours are so very BBQ (and significant other) smokey and noisy. Out of control raucous. Thanks “tories” for ruing out lives.
    When the govt. proceeded to subject us to super expensive energy last winter ( it’s still blinking cold) we thought that maybe the ( what we called an air conditioner with a heating function ) might warm us rather than have the gas central heating or the slog of the wood burner.
    NOT A CHANCE!

    1. Cuibono
      May 21, 2023

      “Ruing” = RUINING

    2. glen cullen
      May 21, 2023

      +1

  4. Cuibono
    May 21, 2023

    +1
    And I don’t remember anyone calling it “retrofitting” when we had our lovely gas central heating installed in our 1929 house!
    I guess the govt. is looking forward to the time when digital currency will make it easy to twist arms in the directing of what form of heating ( if any!) we are allowed to buy.
    All thanks to politicians. All this utter misery and wasted lives.

  5. Cuibono
    May 21, 2023

    Make it quick and make it easy,
    Come on now, please don’t be lazy,
    Press that button!
    You might as well!
    Blast us out of your new Hell.

  6. agricola
    May 21, 2023

    Less reliable than the Oracle at Delphi.

  7. Mickey Taking
    May 21, 2023

    So wild guesses with no real input, as to cost, ability to make or buy in UK. Then who will install?
    Total imagined is 1.5m homes with them.
    Current number of homes roughly 25m with perhaps nearer 30m by 2030 should the hoped for growth in building actually happen. So expectation is about a 5% use of heat pumps over the next 6 years.

    1. glen cullen
      May 21, 2023

      …and our government is banning gas central heating forcing everyone down a dark chapter in history …the gods of NETZERO must have their pound of flesh

  8. Jude
    May 21, 2023

    Not many then? So Net Zero is a money making racket.
    The reason I say that is I have an expensive heat pump which costs more to service & maintain than gas. It does not cost less than gas as I have underfloor heating. Which has to be kept at a constant 20 degrees to work efficiently! Agree my house is new so conforms to all modern insulation etc. But my biggest energy saver on sunny days is the ÂŁ7.6k subsidised (?) Solar panels. That I have invested in! There can never be Net Zero in energy terms. Only Net Zero in common sense in the whole of our political & civil service class…..

  9. Sakara Gold
    May 21, 2023

    Octopus energy and British Gas have both announced that they are doing installed heat pumps for about ÂŁ3000 for a simple instalation and less than ÂŁ8000 for a complex property. Octopus have finance from Legal & General for this

    1. graham1946
      May 21, 2023

      So that’s all right then, especially for the low paid and pensioners who have trouble putting food on the table. Talk about casting a blind eye and seeing only what you want to see.

    2. Martin in Bristol
      May 21, 2023

      That’s just the installation costs SG
      Now add the costs of upgraded insulation and upgraded radiators.
      And don’t forget electricity is several times the costof gas per KwH.

    3. Mark
      May 21, 2023

      But British Gas have also announced they will only do installations in properties that have adequate insulation to make heat pumps work. They probably already have underfloor heating too, so the work required will be much more limited.

    4. APL
      May 26, 2023

      Sakara Gold: “Octopus have finance from Legal & General for this”

      Oh ****! There goes the rest of my private pension fund

  10. dixie
    May 21, 2023

    Some followup questions;
    What is the strategy for unsubsidised, economic energy provision for these heat pumps, including a plan to meet eventual target populkation of heat pump fleet?
    What is the strategy and provision for economic energy provision for the vast majority of households who will not have heat pumps?

    1. graham1946
      May 21, 2023

      They are starting to backtrack on heat pumps and are now looking at the noise they make – presumably they know they don’t work, we won’t have enough juice to run them and are looking to save face. Maybe quiet when new, but anyone knows big fans do not get quieter with age. Imagine a big housing estate of them – we are heading for even more mental problems than Covid lockdowns caused.

  11. glen cullen
    May 21, 2023

    We have more immigration than the number of expected install heat pumps …another joke commie policy

  12. glen cullen
    May 21, 2023

    I’m a Tory voter and I would now rally and protest against this netzero policy and give my vote to anyone else

    1. APL
      May 26, 2023

      Glen Cullen: “I’m a Tory voter …”

      After the last three years, why?

  13. Kenneth
    May 21, 2023

    I’m no expert on parliamentary protocol but the question was not answered (take-up rate was not addressed).
    That seems a bit rude to me.

  14. Donna
    May 21, 2023

    Could …. but won’t. Since people either don’t want them or can’t afford them (or both).

  15. Original Richard
    May 21, 2023

    And where will all these heat pumps be made?

    China I expect as they have cheap coal produced energy?

    And where will all the installers and maintenance engineers come from?

    India?

    Note that just like solar panels heat pumps do not work when they’re really needed and revert to simple resistance heating when it’s really cold.

  16. mancunius
    May 21, 2023

    To quote Oscar Wilde “…That is the meaning of fiction!”

  17. Roy Grainger
    May 21, 2023

    Heat pumps don’t work adequately in Winter so you have to supplement with direct electrical heating which is very expensive and inefficient. So in fact electrical generation capacity needs to increase by even more than has been estimated. Then you can add in the increased generation capacity needed for electric cars by 2030. Electricity rationing and power cuts (as already happens in California) will be the only solution and whichever party is in power at the time will get thrown out. Meanwhile I see India are planning to greatly expand their coal production over the next decade.

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