The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has today announced that it has awarded grants totaling over £15m to 24 innovative low carbon heating projects, with the aim of accelerating the use of heat pumps in UK households.
The funding is part of the Government’s Heat Pump Ready programme, in place to reduce costs and increase the performance of domestic heat pumps, minimise disruption in homes during the process of heat pump installation and develop financial models that support an increase in heat pump deployment.
Business and Energy Minister Lord Callanan said:
“In light of rising global gas and oil prices, getting low-carbon heating technology into homes is a priority for this government as it will help households ditch the costly fossil fuels that are driving up bills.
“Heat pumps are a proven, reliable technology that uses cheaper renewable energy produced in the UK. We are already bringing costs down through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and slashing VAT to zero, but by finding innovative ways to make them even cheaper and easier to install, we will help more homes see the benefits even quicker.”
The Heat Pump Ready initiative and the above mentioned Boiler Upgrade Scheme, offering homeowners £5,000 towards the installation of a heat pump, are part of BEIS’ strategy to achieve the target of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028, and for the renewable technology to cost the same as fossil fuelled boilers by 2030 at the latest. According to reports, the sector grew by 50% in 2021, with roughly 67,000 of the low-carbon heating product installed.
The projects being supported by this latest round of funding include a scheme in Cornwall that is developing efficient and ecological refrigerants, which circulate through heat pumps to absorb, transport and release heat; a project in Oxfordshire looking at ways to reduce the costs of installing and running a heat pump; and another project in North Yorkshire using data from smart meters to help optimise the running of a heat pump in a household energy system.
