The UK remains way off to track from meeting its heat pump deployment goals: a new analysis of census data has confirmed that the vast majority of UK homes remain reliant on gas boilers. The study by innovation charity Nesta says 74% of homes continue to use gas boilers with the number of households heated by gas central heating falling by just 4% between 2011-2021. And over the past decade only 111,000 dwellings have switched from gas boilers to cleaner options.
The governments £450m boiler upgrade scheme clearly isn’t working. The scheme was allocated £150m a year for three years for £5,000 grants for the installation of home heat pumps and other low-carbon boiler replacements in England and Wales, as part of a wider heat and buildings strategy design to help meet net zero goals. The poor take-up has led to adverse comments from the House of Lords environment and climate change committee. It noted that only a third of the schemes annual budget had been used since its launch last May. By the end of January, £49.7m in vouchers had been issued, for 7,641 installations, according to Ofgem.
In a letter to Lord Callanan, at the new Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Baroness Parminter, the Committee chair, said that public awareness of low-carbon heating systems was ‘very limited’ and promotion of the scheme had been ‘inadequate’. She also blamed a shortage of heat pump installers and ‘insufficient independent advice for homeowners’ for the lack of take-up. In addition, she said that efforts to present hydrogen as a solution for home heating were also to blame, arguing that ‘hydrogen is not a serious option for home heating for the short to medium-term and misleading messages, including from the government, are negatively affecting take-up of established low-carbon home heating technologies like heat pumps.’
Also, although the Committee backed insulation, she said it felt that the use of high EPC energy performance ratings as a pre-requisite for heat pump installation made that option more costly than installing gas boilers, for which there is no such requirement. So she says the EPC rule should be removed. That could be tricky - heat pumps can be less efficient and cost effective in poorly insulated houses. She also wanted more of a focus on more efficient ground source heat pump- instead of air sourced units. But they are harder to install and cost more. And there is already plenty of commentary about the cost and difficulty of installing heat pumps generally. There is also the issue that heat pumps may need heat source backup at times, e.g. for fast heating in cold weather, and the widespread use of heat pumps would also require some power grid upgrades, since it would be taking over the gas grid’s heating role.
Clearly, even leaving those issues aside, all is not well with the heating programme and something has to change. In the letter sent to the DESNZ, she warned that if the current heat pump take-up rate continues, only half of the allocated budget will be used and the government target of hitting 600,000 installations a year by 2028 was ‘very unlikely,’ to be met.
Problems also face the government in relation to its hydrogen target. Although, as the Committee noted, heat pumps are seen as the best option, there may still be some use of hydrogen for home heating in some contexts, using a repurposed gas grid either directly or possibly along with heat pumps in backup hybrid units. However, there have been a lot of concerns about the use of fossil-gas derived ‘blue hydrogen’: even with expensive carbon capture and storage technology, it is not a carbon free option and natural gas is no longer a cheap energy source.
The prospects for green hydrogen from renewables are better: it is zero carbon and the efficiency of electrolysis is improving. However, heat pumps, small and large, are now seen as much more viable in most cases for home heating, as has been confirmed in the recent European study, indicating that heat pumps can deliver heat at a third of the cost of green hydrogen. So its use for heating may be limited. But hydrogen has many other uses, including for vehicles and in industry, and also, crucially, as a storable fuel for balancing variable renewables- using surpluses in renewable power to meet later lulls in renewable supply, or peaks in demand. So, even if it doesn’t get used much for heating, hydrogen use is likely to grow. The government had set a target of installing 10GW of (blue and green) hydrogen production capacity by 2030, with a new levy being proposed from 2025, as part of the new Energy Security Bill, to provide support for it. But objections have emerged from backbench Tories.
Greens opposed to blue hydrogen will no doubt be happy if that resistance spreads, but a general backlash to hydrogen could also slow green hydrogen progress too. That could seriously undermine renewable development – given the need for grid balancing which green hydrogen could meet. So this issue has to be fought out. So too will some other green heat related issues covered in the Energy Security Bill, which is currently going through parliament. For example on heat nets, the select committee chair said that ‘to inform their decision on installing a new heating system, households need clarity on the priority local areas for new heat networks and on plans to change the heat source of existing heat networks.’ She wanted to know ‘what is the timeframe for launching the heat network zoning delivery consultation and what plans are there to put forward a deadline for zone designations.’
Clearly, there are some new energy infrastructure development and energy vectors issues which will interact with the heat pump programme- and that is leaving aside the huge multi- sector issue of energy saving and heat recovery, with major cost and carbon savings being possible. The Energy Security Bill does touch on this in terms of the ECO power utility support programme, but does not go much beyond that. The new Action Plan for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects may help to move things along, across the board, with revised National Policy Statements also due from the Dept for Transport, Dept for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Dept for Energy Security and Net Zero. And the government has also asked the National Infrastructure Commission to make recommendations on how the process to renew NPSs can be strengthened and improved. But given the urgent need for policy changes and action on the ground, it all seems a little ponderous and slow.
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