The challenges for our renewable heating future

George Clarke looks at how homeowners can switch to more sustainable heating

So, the UK government has set a target of 600,000 heat pump installs PER YEAR by 2028.

That is a very ambitious target because it means we are going to have to increase the current number of installations by 10-fold in the next 5 years!

Obviously, this is the right direction we must go in to go from a fossil-fuel burning heating economy to being a clean and green renewable energy economy.

But, for us to have any chance of meeting that ambitious target, a number of very important things need to happen in the industry and these come down to education and, just as important, to cost.

After replacing his heating with an air source heat pump, his comment was ‘Why isn’t everyone doing it?'

A fair question

First, there needs to be an enormous push to educate the public on the difference between fossil-fuel heating and renewable heating from a heat pump.

Many still think of this as new technology, although modern heat pumps are not that new to be honest and the technology has been tried, tested and refined for over 15 years now.

I’ve had an air-source heat pump fitted to my period house in London for a few years now and I love it, but I have to be honest and say that before I took the plunge with the installation, I had to educate myself on the finer points of air-source heat pumps, how they worked and how they compared with more traditional or conventional forms of heating.??

Literally, just as I finished typing the word ‘heating’ in the last paragraph, one of my best friends called me from his house in France. We’ve just had a chat instigated by him on air source heat pumps because this is the first week he’s experienced renewable heating after replacing his oil-fired heating system with an air-source heat pump installation.

After waxing lyrical about how much he’s pleased with his new system and how much better the heating is in his old house, his comment was: “Why isn’t everyone doing it?”

It’s a very fair question.

Other concerns

Why isn’t everyone doing it?

Of course, the cost-of-living crisis and the costs associated with making the change from an oil or gas-fired boiler to an air source heat pump doesn’t help.

People have other concerns on their mind right now, like staying employed, paying their mortgages and putting food on the table.

That is enough pressure alone right now.

But I think it is fair to say that people are also VERY worried about their sky-rocketing energy bills!??

How do heat pumps work?

Air-source heat pumps (ASHP) units replace your conventional gas or oil boiler.

They heat your hot water for all of your hot taps, and they heat the water that runs through your radiators or your underfloor heating system.

In very simple terms an ASHP has a fan, which helps draw air across an internal structure of pipes to capture heat energy from the outside air. And it can do this even when there is snow and ice on the ground.

The captured heat energy is compressed so it becomes very hot and this is used to warm up water. The heat is stored in a very efficient and highly insulated hot water tank and used whenever you need it. The air source heat pump tops up the hot water in the tank whenever it needs to.

There is no gas or oil involved at all, so you can completely remove these carbon-intensive fuels from your site, and your sight!

Of course, you need electricity to power the ASHP and it makes complete sense for that electricity to be purchased from a ‘renewable electricity supplier’ otherwise you would have to question the ethics of why you’re doing it at all.

The fact is that if your current gas boiler or oil-fired boiler is more than 12-15 years old and hasn’t been regularly serviced properly, then it is probably quite inefficient.

Your will be paying a lot of money for it to be generations less efficient at heating than it should.

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