Paul Deane: Asking people to install a heat pump to save the planet is a difficult sell; showing how to save money may gain more traction
When discussing whether a heat pump is suitable for your home, it’s important to consider the property, the price, and the person paying for it. Like many renewable technologies, the cost of buying a heat pump compared with a fossil boiler is higher, but the cost of using it is lower. A heat pump for a typical home that is using natural gas today may cost up to two-three times more than a new gas boiler and about half as much to run on an annual basis.
It’s not possible to know the cost of gas and electricity in the future, but looking at today’s prices, the overall cost of buying and running a heat pump in a suitable home is similar to a gas replacement and gas-run system. However, an important prerequisite for any heat pump is that your home must not leak a lot of heat; otherwise, your heating bills will be high.
If you are living in a well-insulated home with good windows and doors and can afford the extra upfront cost of a heat pump, then it is a low-risk investment that is cleaner and safer. However, in my view, there are two serious barriers facing the uptake of heat pumps in Ireland: one is access to good information, and the second is access to money.
If you are unfamiliar with the area, then figuring out what information on the internet is reliable or not is very hard. When I spoke to my plumber, they recommended (with the best of intentions) what they knew best, which was to replace the current oil boiler with another oil-fired boiler. I have found the best information on whether to move ahead with a heat pump comes from registered technical energy assessors.
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Each home is different, and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t apply to heat pumps. I found a technical assessor to be very helpful and offered a different perspective on new technologies. They will advise on the full scope of works you need to complete prior to installing a heat pump so you go into this with your eyes open.
Good grants and loans are available, but the high upfront cost may put already stretched families off. Many existing homes in Ireland will require some form of retrofitting or increased insulation to reduce the amount of heat leakage and fuel used to heat them. Putting adequate insulation or retrofitting your home is expensive, and can carry an additional upfront cost on top of your heat pump cost. This can be outside the reach of most families when considering traditional financial paybacks of eight to 10 years.
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An option that can help address this is for the State to use the concept of property-linked finance as opposed to traditional person-linked finance. The idea here is that a State-backed loan for your retrofit is linked to the lifetime of the property rather than the economic lifetime of the person.
Linking repayments of the costs of retrofitting to the lifetime of the property (for example, 80-100 years) rather than the person would give lower annual repayments over a longer time and make it more attractive. Whoever is in the property repays that portion of the loan because they also receive the benefit of the retrofit. It is also fair because the benefit of the retrofit would be valid for the lifetime of the property.
There is no doubt that heat pumps are cleaner and better than fossil fuel options, but we must expand the menu of financial measures to help families afford them. Asking people to install a heat pump to save the planet is a difficult sell; showing us how to save money may gain more traction.
Dr Paul Deane is senior lecturer in Clean Energy Futures at UCC
Kevin McPartlan: The policy of exclusively focusing on heat pumps is failing
Too many homes in Ireland are poorly insulated and difficult to heat. Not only does this mean higher heating bills, it also negatively impacts the quality of life for many homeowners. Over the coming years, it is imperative that those houses with the lowest energy ratings are retrofitted and, wherever it makes sense, a heat pump installed. And yes, once an energy rating of B or above has been achieved, for many homes the best means of delivering fast, cost-effective, sustainable heat is via a heat pump.
However, there are many homeowners for whom installing a heat pump is not a realistic current option – and won’t become one soon. There are several reasons for this – cost, housing type and willingness to switch. Currently, 700,000 homeowners in Ireland rely on liquid fuels for their heating, with one in three over 65 years of age. While the Government offers these homeowners a range of incentives for retrofitting and heat pump installation, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s (SEAI) research finds that cost is the largest barrier to heat pump installation.
The median cost of a deep retrofit with heat pump installation for a detached/semidetached home is about €60,000. Even when grants and low-cost loans are factored in, this means an upfront cost of about €37,000. With the median annual disposable income for Irish households at €42,000, these high upfront costs (and long payback periods) mean that investing in retrofits and heat pumps is often beyond a household’s budget.
Fifty nine per cent of homeowners with a liquid boiler live rurally. Rural homeowners are far more likely to live in detached or semidetached homes which are more prone to energy inefficiency. For such homes, installing new window glazing and insulating attics and floors would have an immediate benefit for energy efficiency by retaining more heat.
In addition, by replacing the oil in their boiler with lower carbon liquid fuels, for example biofuels, this could reduce heating emissions by as much as 87 per cent, creating a win-win of warmer homes and lower emissions.
An SEAI report published this year found that most homeowners would not switch to a heat pump “even if installation came at no cost to them”. A recent survey from Fuels For Ireland (FFI) found that 69 per cent of Irish households have no plans to install a heat pump, rising to 75 per cent for households in rural areas. This rises to more than 80 per cent for homeowners over 55 years of age.
The same FFI survey showed strong support for the use of alternative fuels, with 70 per cent of respondents supportive of the increased use of lower carbon fuels to reduce emissions without switching to heat pumps.
Low carbon fuels have already been integrated in the transport sector in Ireland using existing infrastructure, with uptake continuing to rise while emissions fall. We can easily do the same for home heating. So why aren’t we?
The Government set a target in 2020 target to install 400,000 heat pumps in existing homes by the end of the decade, however as of April, fewer than 20,000 have been installed. The policy of exclusively focusing on heat pumps is evidently failing.
There is no quick and easy way to fully decarbonise heating. For newer energy efficient buildings, heat pumps are the obvious choice, but for hundreds of thousands of families, the cost of making their homes heat pump-ready makes an immediate switch impossible.
We need to look at how all homeowners can be empowered to reduce their heating emissions. Low carbon liquid fuels can be part of the solution – however, they must be affordable and, more importantly, sustainable. Over the coming months, an EU-wide database will be fully operational to verify the sustainability of all feedstocks.
To compete with fossil fuels, the introduction of low carbon fuels must be supported through fiscal policies, similar to how other sustainable energy sources have been incentivised. Crucially, Government policies need to cater to all household types and demographics.
If a “just transition” is to become a reality, a more open-minded, pragmatic approach, that includes not only heat pumps but a broader range of decarbonisation solutions, needs to be considered.
Kevin McPartlan is chief executive of Fuels for Ireland
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