£5,000 grants to support heat pump installation in the home – where’s the rest?
This week the Government published its long awaited Heat and Buildings Strategy and outlined their plans for £5,000 grants to allow people to install heat pumps in their homes and other low-carbon boiler replacements as part of a wider heat and buildings strategy.
The announcement outlines that a £5000 grant will be available to those who want to replace their boiler with an Air Source heat pump and £6000 to install a Ground Source heat pump. While this looks good on paper, those in the industry are fully aware that for Ground Source Heating this may just about cover the cost of the heat pump itself – it goes little to no way towards paying for the necessary upgrade of the heat delivery system (radiators etc), which would be required if the heat pump is to run at its most efficient – which is the point, isn’t it?
The grant does not go far enough to even make a dent in the 600,000 heat pumps the government want installed every year as the GSHPA indicate in there Facebook post on the announcement: Ground Source Heat Pump Association – Posts | Facebook
The other issue with the announcement is that it seems to promote the installation of Air Source over Ground Source – the grant amounts indicate this particularly – despite it being the least efficient of the renewable heating options.
H.D. Services Ltd understand that in a retrofit scenario our specific heating option is not the most suitable, however we are concerned – although not surprised – to see that the Government is not backing up what they say with robust and appropriately considered (what is best for the environment and not their own economy) strategies and options to increase the uptake of energy efficient renewable heating option in existing properties.
It also strikes us that making it mandatory for all new builds to have renewable heating installed over gas boilers is a sensible option, what does not make sense is waiting over 10 years for this to become mandatory when the technology is available now and so the requirement could easily be phased in before 2035.
