Heat-Pump Sales Plummet by Almost 50% Across Europe
Heat-pump sales in Europe plummeted by 47% in the first half of the year, as fewer households switched from gas boilers. The Telegraph has more.
Just 765,000 heat pumps were sold in 2024 across the 13 European countries that represent 80% of the market, the European Heat Pump Association said.
Over the same period in 2023, 1.44 million heat pumps were sold in countries including France, Italy, Germany and Sweden.
It means fewer than 1.5 million heat pumps are likely to be sold in 2024, which is the lowest level since 2019.
Sales were hit by dropping gas prices, which soared after Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, wavering government subsidies and the cost of living crisis.
After the war began, the EU set a target of installing at least 10 million more heat pumps by 2027 as part of efforts to lessen its dependence on Russian gas but a subsequent boom in sales is now over.
The U.K. Government is reported to be planning to introduce heat-pump targets in Britain next year in what has been branded a “boiler tax” on households.
Homeowners in countries such as Germany rebelled against government drives to install more of the green technology, which is expensive to set up, during the cost of living crisis.
Olaf Scholz’s under-fire coalition has since watered down its proposals to make heat pumps compulsory from 2024 in the face of public anger.
Worth reading in full.
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I’m curious.
I know about the noise they make, the lukewarm temps they provide, the complete replacement of small with large bore radiator pipes, the replacement of rads with larger ones, the high installation cost and the requirement for massive levels of insulation.
But what does it do to your electricity bill to drive the pumps?
If you have a well engineered, well built modern house with a heat pump that is properly designed to work with the engineering spec of your house then you may be OK. There are a small number of UK houses in that category.
Otherwise you may well find that, in cold weather, a retrofit heat pump in an older UK house will ‘beat it’s brains out” running flat out to try and heat your house. As well as high electric costs you will face some steep repair and maintenance costs.
Yep
Try eye watering repair and maintenance costs. I’ve got a 10 year old ground source heat pump and components are starting to life expire. Repair costs have exceeded energy costs for the last couple of years and try finding a local plumber who will touch it!
I’m seriously considering going back to oil.
I lived for 2 and a half years in a rented old cottage that had an air source heat pump put in some years back to replace the original oil tank (no mains gas in village). Last winter I went away for a week and turned the heating clock to ‘frost’ protection – ie the heating comes on if it drops below 7 degrees. When I returned the pump refused to function and I had to find an engineer who charged me £100 to ‘trick’ the pump that the outside air was warmer than it actually was to get it going. Apparently I should have set the clock to 18 degrees constant and left it there (that differed from the previous engineer advice the year before). Since it was costing me a fortune every week to be lukewarm and I don’t believe in heating a space I’m not in, I found that difficult to do. I was paying around £50 a week 9then) in electric for a 2 bedroom cottage with a log burner than I used constantly – sometimes all day in the front room. When I moved out in the summer (with relief) everything smelt damp and I… Read more »
Gas is about 1/3rd the price of electricity per unit of energy.
Heat pumps output about 3x the energy, in the form of heat, that they use. Essentially the kWs put in drive a pump, heat is a byproduct. Thus, a heat pump outputs the same amount of heat as a gas heater £ for £. Of course, this calculation would change if the tax or tariff for gas/electricity changed. But, essentially heat pumps cost about the same as gas heating.
However, heat pumps aren’t as responsive, are expensive to fit & are big & noisy.
If you have gas, at present there’s not a compelling reason to change to a heat pump.
Additionally, Gas Standing Charge (where we live) is c.60% of Electricity SC.
In terms of running costs and performance, theory is interesting, but reality is more revealing.
We visited a house recently with retro-fitted air source heat pump system, and their electricity cost is 62% more than our gas+electricity aggregate per annum.
Similar sized house, single storey (warmer, ours is 2-storey), newer and better insulated, same occupancy numbers, and, they had two log burners that reduce demand on the central system.
Far from “no compelling reason”, the concept is dead in the water for retro-fit. As with EVil cars, consumers appear to be slowly waking up. It can be guaranteed that anything the Guv~WHO~WEF~etc pushes so hard is harmful either to our wallets or to our wellbeing and enjoyment (but beneficial to their own).
And, I’ve never heard of a gas cut, but I’ve experienced power cuts! In this new futuristic world, electric power supply will never be interrupted by,let’s say, industrial action then? or unachievable net zero green goals? (My arse)
God help anyone, especially the old who fall for this nonsense, fit a real fire and give yourself options! You can burn your furniture if needs must.
Real ‘Winter’s coming’
Yep great questions—–Gas Central heating is by far the best central heating system there is and it provides us with the ability to heat our homes to 21 degrees in a matter of 10 minutes. Ripping all of that out to install an inferior heating system is irrational and entirely based on political considerations regarding a “climate crisis” which is the language of politics not the language of science.
That’s what I want (though 21 C is too warm for me – 19 seems about right). Bedroom windows open overnight except on the bitterest, coldest nights. Then get up, shut the windows and put the heating on.
I don’t think a heat pump would do that for me.
Perhaps I’ll need remote/timer controlled window motors linked to the heating timer?
Ok 20 C or 19 C depending on your preference. But there is a curious thing I have noticed regarding temperature. In summer without heating on the temperature on my digital living room thermometer may say it is 20 C, and I do not feel cold at all, infact it is quite pleasant. Well, it is the summer after all. But in the middle of winter when the same thermometer says 20 C I can often feel it is too cold. I am sure other people will have noticed this as well and there must be some explanation for the phenomenon.—–Perhaps because the outside temperature is much lower eg
I had to replace our boiler the other day, and at no point in the process did anyone we contacted ever mention heat pumps, which I thought was interesting
I rather feel that as the discerning general public fail to buy heat pumps and EVs, our petulant, net-zero obsessed political ‘leaders’ will switch from amiable encouragement mode to authoritarian, compulsory regulatory mode.
‘kinell!
Yes authoritarian mode is very likely or “bribe mode”
Ban mode! Ban everything everyone actually wants and force them into what they don’t!
They can go swivel, I’m keeping my multi fuel as my main heating and they will have to come and physically drag me out of my own home (and they’d be in for one hell of a stand off!) to stop me burning anything and everything to keep my loved ones warm! A line has to drawn!
Real winters are coming!
Yes the pretend to save the planet agenda is a nasty old business.
No wonder the left doesn’t believe in the free market. People don’t like buying things that don’t work.
Breaking new…
https://x.com/energygovuk/status/1839583308323156364
All our energy worries are over:
“Did you know a heat pump is 3x more efficient than a gas boiler?
Meaning it generates 3 times more energy than it consumes.”
Bloody hell! That sounds dangerous! Imagine if you fed the output energy into the input. ELE.
Of course, what they mean is that it moves (pumps) heat from outside your home to the inside. This cools the outside temperature a bit thus reducing global warming – win/win.
To solve the climate crisis all we need is to build huge heat pumps and pump the heat into the core of the planet. WCPGW.
They’ve invented not only a perpetual motion machine, but infinite energy and will possibly destroy the universe!
Good job they’re experts.
As a heating engineer I understand the merits of heat pumps in certain situations where a SCOP rating as high as 5 (5kw output for every 1kw of electricity input) is achieved. Now obviously this can’t be met in the vast majority of housing stock in the UK without massively increasing the insulative qualities at enormous expense. Which begs the question: wouldn’t gas boilers become vastly more efficient with the same level of insulation?
Yes gas boilers would be more efficient with certain types of insulation (not cavity wall though) But there is a Political Agenda to be rid of fossil fuels one way or another. It isn’t about fighting climate change or protecting the planet. It is about the Politics that says the western world has used up more than our fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground. So the Political Class want to stop us doing that. They will fob any technology on us no matter how inefficient or expensive as long as it isn’t fossil fuels, with climate as the excuse for dong that.
I agree with you on what the agenda is. I was just pointing out yet another reason why what is being sold to us doesn’t add up.
Yes and it only confirms that there is an agenda when they try and coerce us into using technology that doesn’t add up economically or practically.
It is true that a heat pump can save energy. We bought a heat pump based tumble dryer which collects and drains the water that it first evaporates from the clothes and then condenses it out to a drain (or tank) as it does a heat exchange with the incoming air.
I have recorded our energy meter readings for years. There’s a perceptible change in our electricity consumption from the time of buying the machine. It was an expensive machine. By my reckoning at current electricity prices it will pay for its extra cost in about 10 years. In other words we will break even on the cost (excluding the opportunity cost of lost interest or whatever) as compared with a non-heat pump version only if it lasts 10 years.
Yep, definitely agree on the cost to payback ratio.
Who can be surprised by this? What the government is asking is that people switch to an expensive complicated electro-mechanical device that uses high pressure gas driven by electricity while the government has tripled the cost of electricity through their green policies. These people really have no idea what they are doing and they are somehow in charge.