Heat pumps help decarbonise homes

Heat pumps help decarbonise homes and shave up to £375 off home heating bills

OVO data shows heat pumps are helping households reduce their heating bills while also powering their homes with cleaner, greener electricity.

Increasingly powered by electricity from renewable sources and up to five times more energy efficient than gas boilers, air source heat pumps are key to cutting UK households’ carbon emissions, with home heating systems currently responsible for 18% of carbon emissions nationally.

Our latest polling reveals that over two thirds (64%) of people are thinking of ways to improve their home’s energy efficiency, with a third of Brits interested in having a heat pump installed.

Yet the data shows we’re lagging far behind our European counterparts when it comes to installing heat pumps in our homes. Only 36,000 air source heat pumps were installed in the UK last year, compared with more than 900,000 in France.

The most popular reasons given by people for considering a heat pump are to: help reduce energy bills (88%); make the home more energy efficient (49%); lower carbon emissions (42%).

OVO’s best-in-market heat pump rate halves the cost of electricity for heat pumps. This means people can heat their homes with a heat pump for £375 less a year than it would cost them to run a gas boiler. When you couple that with support from the government's Boiler Upgrade Scheme (https://www.gov.uk/apply-boiler-upgrade-scheme/what-you-can-get), which contributes £7,500 to the replacement of a gas boiler with a new heat pump, you can see that the excitement amounts to a lot more than just hot air.

Read more about OVO’s Heat Pump Plus here (https://www.ovoenergy.com/heat-pumps).