Heat pump grants: Is the Government warming to my point of view?

Intatec CEO Stuart Gizzi

The Government has spent much of this year widening the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

More technologies qualify, the scheme now runs to 2030 and some off-gas-grid households can claim £9,000 towards a heat pump.

But one thing has not changed.

Fit a heat pump alongside an existing gas boiler and there is still no help at all.

For the past couple of years I have argued that this leaves a sizeable gap in the way we think about decarbonising home heating.

Keep the gas boiler, or rip it out and go fully electric.

Those are apparently the choices.

But millions of homeowners sit somewhere in between. They have boilers that work, may only be a few years old and could have another decade of useful life ahead of them.

They are unlikely to throw those boilers away tomorrow. But they could start cutting their gas use tomorrow by adding a heat pump.

That is where hybrids come in.

Inta makes Hydra, but we also manufacture OEM components for boilers and air source heat pumps. I am not interested in talking one technology down to sell another.

So, after all the changes to clean heat policy this year, is the Government finally warming to my point of view?

Not quite. But there are signs that its own rules are beginning to make the argument for me.

Hybrids already count

Under the Clean Heat Market Mechanism, a qualifying hybrid counts towards a manufacturer’s clean heat obligation at half the rate of a standalone heat pump.

So the government already recognises that hybrids contribute towards the transition.

That matters, because the argument has never been that somebody ready for a full heat pump should fit a hybrid instead.

For a new home, or an existing property where the owner is ready to come off gas altogether, a properly designed standalone heat pump is the better answer.

The argument is about the homes where that is not going to happen yet.

For them, the choice is often not hybrid versus full heat pump.

It is hybrid versus another decade of gas.

We know they can make a difference

Testing at the University of Salford’s Energy House for Worcester Bosch examined a heat-pump-led hybrid in a replica pre-1919 solid-wall property.

Using those results to model annual performance, Worcester Bosch calculated that the heat pump could provide around 94 per cent of annual heat demand and more than 70 per cent even at minus 3°C.

Its modelling suggested a carbon reduction of around 1,270 kg a year compared with boiler-only heating.

It was controlled testing used to model annual performance, rather than a year-long trial in an occupied home, and I would like to see more real-world data.

But the principle is simple enough.

If the heat pump is doing most of the heating, the boiler is burning much less gas.

Back the ask, but don’t wait for it

Worcester Bosch has proposed a £3,750 grant for qualifying hybrids, half the standard Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant.

We sat alongside them at our own round table on hybrid heating, and I think that is a sensible proposal.

Nobody is suggesting a household keeping a gas boiler should receive exactly the same support as one moving completely away from fossil fuel.

But offering nothing at all looks increasingly difficult to justify when another government policy already recognises that hybrids have value.

I will keep making that case.

But I do not think the industry should sit around waiting for the government to agree with us.

The Clean Heat Market Mechanism already recognises retrofit hybrids. A qualifying heat pump can be added to an existing boiler; the two do not have to have been installed together.

In other words, this is not a future technology waiting for a policy decision.

We can fit these systems now.

We can start displacing gas now.

And we can keep arguing for government support while we get on with doing it.

Because the clock is still running

More than a million gas boilers are still being sold in Britain every year.

Every new one fitted today is likely to remain on the wall for years.

Technically, somebody who bought a boiler two years ago can rip it out tomorrow and claim support towards a full heat pump.

But who is actually going to do that?

Who buys an expensive product designed to last 10 or 15 years and throws it away after two?

Almost nobody.

That is not resistance to decarbonisation. It is ordinary consumer behaviour.

And every year another huge group of households becomes unlikely to move straight to a full heat pump until well into the next decade.

We could spend the next few years arguing about whether those homes fit neatly into the policy pathway.

Or we could start cutting their gas use.

That, for me, is where the debate needs to move next.

So, is the Government warming to my point of view?

Perhaps a little.

I would like it to go further, and I will keep saying so.

But in the meantime, the technology exists, the boilers are already on the wall and the carbon saving does not need permission to start.

Keep making the case. But get on with it too.

PR for the plumbing and heating industry by Reeves in Birmingham and Newcastle upon Tyne.