Grants of up to £5,000 to encourage homeowners to install heat pumps are part of a new scheme launched by the government.
The scheme is to run in England and Wales only with the Department for Busines, Energy & Industrial Strategy having a £450m pot available to allocate to its boiler upgrade scheme over the coming three years.
The government suggests that by subsidising the installation of heat pumps it will help the industry gain critical mass and therefore make technology more affordable, Greg Hands, energy minister said. “With the governments upgrade scheme heat pumps using this clean cheaper electricity will be the cheaper and obvious choice for households choosing to replace their fossil fuel boiler. This will also help to kick-start a British manufacturing industry that will help bring prices down even further while also creating job opportunities and investment”.
Property owners will be able to get:-
- £5,000 off the cost and installation of an air source heat pump
- £5,000 off the cost and installation of a biomass boiler
- £6,000 off the cost and installation of a ground source heat pump
Greg Jackson, Octopus Energy Group chief executive said: “Heat pumps are up to four times more energy efficient than gas boilers but they need to come down in price. The governments new scheme will not only reduce the cost often to the same price as a boiler – but it will also kickstart industry so that there will be no need for subsidies. The scheme is considered super simple and we can already see families moving to cheaper green heating”.
Phill Hurley, Heat Pump Association chair also spoke highly of the scheme saying: “An upfront financial incentive will not only help kickstart the industry by making technology more accessible but will also provide heating installers with the confidence boost needed to upskill. We have the capacity to train 40,000 installers each year and have made big strides as an industry to improve the heat pump training pathway and are hopeful this will inspire the workforce to take the opportunities available”.
“Heat-pumps are readily available and a long-term solution to fossil fuel heating and the scheme is seen as a big step towards kick-starting a mass rollout which is needed to grow the sector and put the UK economy on track to meet net zero”.