Heat pumps are one of the most efficient ways to heat a home, but in the UK they face one big problem:
Electricity is still too expensive comparedwith gas.
The efficiency is actually very simple:
Boiler: £1 in = about 90p of heat out.
Heat pump: £1 in = about £3 of heat out.
That’s because a boiler creates heat by burning fuel.
A heat pump uses electricity to move free heat from outside into the home.
The technology is not the problem. Heat pumps are incredibly efficient.
The problem is the price of electricity.
In countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal and France, electricity is much closer to the price of gas. That means heat pumps make much more financial sense.
But in the UK, electricity is around 4 times more expensive than gas per kWh. So even though a heat pump gives you much more heat from the energy it uses, the running cost benefit can be harder to achieve.
A lot of this comes down to policy. Many levies and extra costs sit on electricity bills, which makes the cleaner option more expensive than it should be.
If we want more homes to move away from gas, this needs to change. Rebalancing electricity and gas prices would make heat pumps easier to sell, easier to justify, and reduce the need for heavy subsidies.
Heat pumps work. But in the UK, the pricing system is making them harder to sell than they need to be.