Heat Pumps: roadmap and market

Elmhurst’s existing dwellings support team has noticed a recent shift in the types of queries received from members and consumers. in line with the government’s Heat and Buildings strategy and the Boiler upgrade scheme, the focus is now on heat pumps.

What is a heat pump?

Heat pumps come in various types, and all operate on a similar concept to a refrigerator. They extract heat from a lowtemperature source, such as the air, and transfer it through a compressor. This process increases the pressure of the energy and thus increases the heat. The heat is then circulated around the home through a heat exchanger.

Heat pumps are highly efficient, with a greater quantity of heat delivered through the home when compared to the equivalent electricity generated. The fact that they are low-carbon heating systems is why the government and industry are pushing to raise awareness and implement measures to encourage people to install them.

The government has created a plan to grow the heat pump market, with the aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 and introducing a new scheme from 2024. The LowCarbon Heat Scheme will place an obligation on heating system manufacturers to ensure that a proportion of their total appliance sales are heat pumps. One challenge, however, is the cost of installation, as in some cases a heat pump can cost 10 times more than a gas boiler. To counter this, the ambition is to reduce the cost of installing a heat pump by 25-50% by 2025 and for cost parity by 2030.

How does a heat pump currently reflect on an EPC?

Although EPCs do report carbon emissions, the headline rating is a cost-based metric.

The methodology for EPCs (SAP) works well at predicting the energy costs of a home fitted with a heat pump compared with, for example, a condensing boiler. Where an assessor selects the make and model of a heat pump, the assumed efficiency will be over 300%. Despite this, under the current fuel prices a shift to a heat pump is likely to cost slightly more and therefore the EPC score will be slightly worse.

The government has referenced this in the Heat and Buildings Strategy, stating that once the current spike in gas prices subsides, the price difference between mains gas and electricity will be addressed by shifting levies from electricity. When the price of gas and electricity is rebalanced, that will be reflected in the SAP methodology, and the EPC rating for a home with a heat pump will improve to demonstrate both the reduction in cost and carbon.

The EPC does not currently recommend any type of heat pump to be installed as an improvement measure, as the methodology has not been kept up to date. The good news is that the assessment process is effective and well-established and that the physics on which the methodology is based has stood the test of time. The government recognises that some of the variables and the logic in how the recommendations are presented are now out-of-date. This is why they are working on an update.

With the methodology likely to change in 2023, we are pushing for changes to the current list of improvement measures (Appendix T) that are applicable to recognise heat pumps. This would mean that a stakeholder looking at an EPC in the future would see a heat pump as a recommendation.

This leads to what we are doing now to help our domestic energy assessors deliver valuable energy advice. We are working on new training material for heating systems that will focus on heat pumps, providing more technical details on how they work and the impact on the EPC. We aim to release this very soon. Additionally, we are running an ABBE Level 3 qualification in the Calculation of Building Heat Loss. This course is designed to provide energy assessors with the knowledge to specify the requirements of a heat pump to be fitted within a property, ultimately helping installers and moving away from fossil fuel heating systems.

As a tool for our members to use for providing advice, we have now released our new ‘Improvement Evaluator’ software to DEAs. This allows members to create improvement scenarios for their customers. Whilst this is not a replacement for the EPC, it can be used in addition and can be shown to customers to reflect how efficient their home will be by installing a heat pump.