GSHPA (the Ground Source Heat Pump Association) has welcomed a new report by the Committee on Climate Change entitled ‘Next steps for UK heat policy’.
The report gives a ringing endorsement of the use of heat pumps for low carbon heating. It says: 'Heating and hot water for UK buildings make up around 40% of our energy consumption and 20% of our greenhouse gas emissions. It will be necessary to largely eliminate these emissions by around 2050 to meet the targets in the Climate Change Act and to maintain the UK contribution to international action under the Paris Agreement.
“Progress to date has stalled. The Government needs a credible new strategy and a much stronger policy framework for buildings decarbonisation'.
GSHPA agrees that a much stronger policy for buildings decarbonisation is urgently required.
In addition, the report notes: 'The main options for the decarbonisation of buildings on the gas grid in the 2030s and 2040s are heat pumps and low carbon hydrogen'.
However, the report also says: 'Heat pumps remain a niche option in the UK as previous policies have failed to deliver a significant increase in uptake'.
GSHPA welcomes this acknowledgement and says it is time for Government to recognise that the surest route to low carbon heating is to provide the appropriate support for ground source heating and, in the commercial context, ground source cooling.
The report is also enthusiastic about ‘low carbon hydrogen’. It is true that H2 contains no carbon and burning it produces only H2O (and no CO2). The report acknowledges that: 'To produce hydrogen in a low carbon way at the necessary scale would require carbon capture and storage (CCS) – whilst this is technically well understood, it remains undeveloped'.
The costs, risks and uncertainties of developing CCS are all in the future. However, the GSHPA points out that heat pumps are available and efficient here and now.
The association says that individuals – and individual companies – will not benefit directly from reducing their own carbon emissions – unless others do so too. Thus the responsibility for reducing the UK's carbon emissions rests squarely with the Government – because only a collective approach will make a difference.
It adds that it is the UK Government which has backed the Paris Agreement and it now needs to take real steps to reduce carbon emissions from the UK. The UK is very unlikely to reach its current carbon reduction targets without concerted action from the Government.
The GSHPA says that the Government now needs to decarbonise electricity generation (which is progressing well); and decarbonise heating and cooling of buildings. To decarbonise heating the combustion of carbon compounds needs to stop. The alternative is to use heat transfer for heating and that means using heat pumps now.