Occasionally I listen to the consumer affairs programme, “You and Yours”, on BBC Radio 4. As well as the usual guff about clothes shopping, gambling and sundry other stuff that doesn’t interest me, there are some articles of general interest, such as various frauds to take note of and avoid. And then there’s the regular pushing of net zero and associated topics. So it came as a surprise when the subject of heat pumps was discussed today in less than glowing terms, especially as I have listened to them being pushed enthusiastically on the same programme in the past. Perhaps the worm is turning here too.

About half-way through the programme, the host, Winifred Robinson, introduced the subject thus (with the rest also being transcribed by me below):

WR: If you’re coming through this winter knowing that your gas boiler will need replacing soon, then what should you do? There are Government grants on offer of up to £7,500 if you want to put a heat pump in. More than 30,000 people have applied for those grants so far, but that’s not anything like what the Government had hoped would apply. But even with these grants the heat pumps can be expensive, and they’re not suitable for every home. And it may be that the price of a gas boiler is about to cone down a little. I’ve been speaking to a couple of people who can give us the benefit of their experience. Mike Foster speaks for the big boiler manufacturers – he’s from their trade group, the Energy & Utilities Alliance. And Mark Jones has been working out what to do about a new boiler. Mark Jones told me about his home.

MJ: It’s a detached house in Bournemouth. It’s got five bedrooms, a fairly large detached house. I currently have a 30Kw boiler installed, so we’d probably need a couple of the largest heat pumps that are available for domestic properties to be able to do the job, and that’s what I’ve been quoted for.

WR: So you looked at putting in two heat pumps?

MJ: Well that’s what I was told I would need by a plumber that came to do the quotation. He said it would be two standard heat pump systems that would work together to generate enough heat to heat the house.

WR: And what did you decide to do?

MJ: Well, I er, the price for that work was about £20,000, so then I was told that because I have an electric car I would also need to upgrade the power supply to the house, and I subsequently found that that was going to cost another £5,500, so we’re looking almost £26,000 to replace my gas boiler with a heat pump system.

WR: So even if you knock off the £7,500, it’s still a lot more expensive than a gas boiler.

MJ: Yeah, it’s substantially more expensive than a gas boiler, and not only that, the actual running costs of the system still would be a bit more – not much more – but I’m led to believe it would be a bit more than running the existing gas boiler. So, as it stands, there’s no incentive at all to spend all that money.

WR: I’m guessing that you’re worried about the environment, or you wouldn’t even have bothered investigating this, would you? You won’t like the idea of just putting in another gas boiler?

MJ: Well, I’d prefer not to, no, I try to be conscious of my carbon footprint, and I have an electric car which I really enjoy, and you know, I’d like to move with the times and try to be a bit ahead of the curve in terms of selling the house on in the future. I’d like to be adequately prepared and, you know, try to do my bit for the environment.

WR: But you’re gonna get a gas boiler?

MJ: [Laughs]. Well, I’d prefer not to. I’m kind of, I feel, I’m probably going to bide my time.

WR: Mike Foster. The manufacturers were given targets, weren’t they, for heat pump installation, and told that they would be fined if those targets were not met. And it’s been reported that the Government has changed its mind about that. Does it mean that the price of a new gas boiler will come down a bit, and explain why it would.

MF: The scheme that you refer to was called the Clean Heat Market Mechanism, and it was designed to incentivise boiler manufacturers to install heat pumps into people’s properties. The problem with the scheme itself is that it really is about consumer demand. That’s what drives the number of heat pump sales in the UK. It’s not about whether a manufacturer can make a heat pump or not, it’s, you know, do people want to put them into their homes? And the experience that Mark has just described is fairly typical of what we’re finding out and about in the country. So that scheme is aimed at the wrong target. And what it does mean is that the boiler manufacturers have looked at their target sales of heat pumps, looked at their target sales of boilers, and concluded that they’re gonna end up paying a fine. And for every heat pump that they fail to sell, they get a fine of £3,000. So cumulatively, added up across the target that they’ve been set, and the boiler manufacturers’ only recourse to protect their own financial position and that of their workforce and the jobs in the local communities, is to put the price of boilers up. And they did that from the first of January. Now, if this speculation proves to be true, and the Government agree [sic] to scrap the fines associated with the scheme, firstly that will be great news for the boiler manufacturers, yes, but it will be super news too for the consumer, because they would see a boiler price fall by about £120.

WR: That’s not very much, is it, I mean it’s not that super news, is it? I don’t know, is that decisive, if you’re putting in a new boiler, £120, that wouldn’t be decisive would it, I mean a boiler lasts for years and years.

MF: And they absolutely last for years and years, and in terms of, you know, the price of a boiler, £120 on something like a £2,500 install might not be a lot of money to some people, but why should people who have a gas boiler, who perhaps can’t afford to make the switch to a heat pump, why should they be penalised because other consumers aren’t picking up the volume of the heat pumps that the Government target suggests? It just seems the wrong group of people to end up targetting with this so-called boiler tax.

WR: So people listening who know their gas boiler will need replacing soon – in your opinion, who should look at the possibility of having a heat pump?

MF: The first thing you would have to reflect on is that the average cost of a heat pump is considerably more than replacing your gas boiler. So the average home typically is about £13,400 to replace your gas boiler with a heat pump. And your running costs are likely to go up by about £120 a year, having a heat pump compared to a gas boiler. But you do save carbon…

WR: They cost more to run? They’ll cost more to run?

MF: Absolutely, on an average efficiency on a, so the Government-acknowledged minimum level of efficiency for a heat pump then, then, yes, they’ll cost about £120 a year more to run. And that doesn’t make it a great marketing offer. But you do save carbon. And in the right home, they might be suitable, so Winifred, you would look at say new-build homes would be the most obvious place for heat pumps to be rolled out in large numbers…

WR: But the Government’s going to make them do that, aren’t they? They’ve had a really early deadline, haven’t they, the house-builders, isn’t that 2028?

MF: Exactly, they’re gonna have to do it by regulation. And then, if you were doing a self-build, that might also be another appropriate time to make the switch to a low temperature heating system typical with a heat pump…

WR: What about a big renovation, then, if you’ve bought a property needs a big renovation, that’s got no heating system, would you go for a heat pump then?

MF: It depends on the type of house that you have, Winifred, and how much your renovation is going to be. If it’s a solid-wall construction home then immediately, you know, I would question whether a heat pump would be the right product for you. But if you’re going to spend money on external wall insulation, you might have under-floor heating put in, then maybe your property becomes suitable for a low temperature system. But you need to have the space, and obviously and importantly you need to have the finance to be able to afford to make the home suitable to run a heat pump.

WR: Mike, there are lots of companies, aren’t there at the moment, advertising electric boilers as replacements for gas boilers. But they’ll cost loads more to run, won’t they? There’ll be no harmful emissions from them, but they’ll cost a lot more to run.

MF: An electric boiler uses electricity from the Grid, and the Grid, you know, it’s not zero carbon yet. You have carbon emissions as the result of running anything that is electrical in your home, and an electric boiler would be no different. The problem with an electric boiler compared to a gas boiler is the running cost. An electric boiler is a ittle bit more efficient but it#s four times more expensive per Kilowatt hour to run.

WR: So what needs to happen? Because if you talk about changing the pricing for electricity as opposed to gas, then the people who are generating the green electricity from windmills and so on, they say that electricity needs to cost even more.

MF: This is what makes this whole debate round heating homes and decarbonisation an incredibly difficult topic. For the UK, with 85% of homes currently on the gas grid, converting the gas to a low-carbon or zero carbon gas might well be the least disruptive, least costly way to go forward, because you can still use a boiler, you can still use your existing radiators, and Winifred one of the things that most people don’t appreciate it is that the majority of homes in this country now have a combi boiler. They have got rid of their hot water tank. You can’t have a heat pump without having a hot water tank. So that adds to the cost and the disruption, and also to some extent, the behavioural change that, you know, individual consumers will have to live with the way in which perhaps you used to do in the old days with an immersion heater and filling up the tank, then waiting for it, you know, somebody to use all the hot water in their bath or their shower. Those are all problems associated with decarbonisation of heat, and there’s no easy answer, I’m afraid.

WR: That was Mike Foster from the Energy & Utilities Alliance and Mark Jones speaking to me a bit earlier.