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Why don't people choose heat pumps?

cathodeRay · 2026-11-03T12:27:35Z

I was going to add this to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme funding reduced by circa £750 million in 2026 budget thread, which is showing some signs of morphing into a why don't people choose heat pumps thread, but decided the topic is better off in a thread of its own. The scale of the problem One of the first things I learnt about assessing medical research is always to check the sources for statements made. Academic literature makes heavy use of references to back up statements made in a paper, and yet it is surprising how often the reference fails to back up the statement made. This problem applies even more to 'market research' and 'industry insight' papers where statements of apparent fact float around like Wordsworth's lonely clouds, bereft of any grounding in solid fact. One such lonely cloud is the current annual number of fossil fuel boilers installed in the UK. A number around 1.7 million crops up all over the place, but none of the references or sources that I have found substantiate this number. Google's 'AI' efforts on this question are spectacularly pathetic, even by its own poor standards: The first 'source' is an undated (maybe around 2023/24) British Gas marketing plug that incidentally drops in a statement that 'up to 1.7 million domestic-scale natural gas boilers are installed in the UK every year' without anything to back up that 'up to' number. Unsubstantiated tosh, binned. The second 'source' is a Johnson government October 2021 policy paper on its Heat and Building Strategy. Note the date, because of pandemic effects. Two thirds of the way down a long page the policy paper asserts that 'Currently 1.7 million fossil fuel boilers are installed per year (natural gas, oil and coal). [footnote 396]' Unfortunately, footnote 396 no longer exists, if indeed it ever existed. The wayback machine (see note at bottom of page for link) does have archived pages for the relevant period, mid 2021, but they do not appear to contain any actual market research, let alone substantiated numbers. Instead there is a graphic: which sort of sums it up. Unsubstantiated tosh, binned. Nonetheless, it is possible, but not proven, that this was the 'source' for the British Gas number. The third 'source' is 'Written evidence [to a select committee?]submitted by Energy & Utilities Alliance (EUA) (WFP0062)' The EUA, we are told, 'provides a leading industry voice helping shape the future policy direction within the sector. Using its wealth of expertise and over 100 years of experience, it acts to further the best interests of its members and the wider community in working towards a sustainable, energy secure and efficient future'. Really? It goes on to assert that 'In 2024, just under 1.5 million natural gas boilers were installed into homes with around 90,000 heat pumps installed in comparison'. Note the heat pump number, we shall come back to that. However, for now, no source is given for either number. Unsubstantiated tosh, binned. All that we have established so far is that google AI doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to evidence. It just churns out tosh. However, buried within [footnote 396] there is a glimmer of hope shining though the clouds: a named organisation, and a general indication that it does market analysis: 'BSRIA (2020), Domestic Boiler Market Analysis – United Kingdom'. And indeed they do, but at £1,410 for the latest report for a single country, I won't be getting that report anytime soon: BSRIA (Building Services Research and Intelligence Association) does have a News Page and Archive, but none of the available press releases contains anything about the number of boilers installed in the UK in recent years. In the interests of thoroughness, I did a more forensic analysis on the wayback machine, and still drew a blank: the earliest BSRIA heating market reports available are from 2025, long after the Johnson government's paper was published: The bottom line appears to be there is nothing in the public domain to substantiate the often quoted 1.7 million annual (domestic?) boilers installed in the UK number. The best that we can hope for is that the goons who wrote Johnson government's policy paper (a) splashed out and got the then current, now at least several years out of date, BSRIA report (b) bothered to read and just as importantly critically appraise the report and (c) had reasonable grounds for believing the 1.7 million number they quoted (d) it wasn't a number distorted by pandemic effects and (e) it still applies today. Quite a lot to wish for...but at the same time, maybe it is the best we have? Who knows? In passing: possible evidence that google AI just makes things up: I did a search for an organisation called the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council (HHIC) which may or may not publish domestic boiler installation stats. Google AI thinks it does: See the first entry in the box on the right: a press relea...

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Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs)

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Mars

(@editor)

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Joined: 6 years ago

Posts: 4979

13/11/2026 2:54 pm

TBH, I’m not convinced that reluctance to buy a heat pump is primarily a problem of homeowner psychology, because wanting to protect your savings and keep your home reliably warm seems a perfectly reasonable starting point to me. My position is that the industry needs to carry much more of the risk of the systems it sells, with clear commitments about comfort and expected energy use, realistic explanations of running costs and somebody accountable for putting things right when the installation fails to deliver. Having said that, I’d expect that of any heating system, whether it’s a gas or oil boiler, a heat battery or anything else, because homeowners need better protection irrespective of the technology they choose. The reason I focus so much on heat pumps is that the installation can cost four or five times as much as a replacement gas boiler, which makes the financial consequences of getting it wrong that much greater.

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EtchedPixels

(@etchedpixels)

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13/11/2026 3:02 pm

Posted by: @editor

↑

TBH, I’m not convinced that reluctance to buy a heat pump is primarily a problem of homeowner psychology, because wanting to protect your savings and keep your home reliably warm seems a perfectly reasonable starting point to me.

That's exactly why people don't go heatpump. Their gas one works, they've been told by everyone heatpumps don't, and there are enough real world genuine horror stories to sustain that belief. It won't save most people much money unless they've got solar and batteries too.

If your starting point is "I want to protect my savings" then "by spending a load of money on a thing I don't understand and seems full of problems and won't save much" is a loser. If you want to keep your house reliably warm, well the boiler does that already and has done since many potential buyers were born. If you are not interested in CO2 emissions, and don't want some feature you can't get on a boiler then even quite rational people are going to keep the money in an ISA, or spend it on insulation, new windows, etc instead.

I agree totally with your starting point, just not the reasoning that follows 8)

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