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Why Don't People Install Heat Pumps?
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Why Don't People Install Heat Pumps?
The UK's climate change mitigating targets commits us to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Because the domestic sector accounts for 28% of all UK energy final consumption the use of natural gas in the home needs to be phased out.
This paper considers why the annual UK installation rate of heat pumps is relatively low in comparison to other countries and questions the source of 'green' electricity required for a large heat pump fleet.
It covers electrically driven vapour compression air source heat pumps (ASHPs) for domestic and light commercial building sectors, providing on-gas grid and off-gas grid locations are considered, for:
- domestic hot water (DHW) plus space heating via low pressure hot water (LPHW)
- domestic hot water (DHW) plus space heating via warm air
This paper focuses on ASHPs, and doesn't include direct heat pump systems, because the number of heat pumps required to replace natural gas boilers and satisfy UK carbon reduction targets is not possible with ground source technology.
