The UK heat pump market to experience double-digit growth

(02/03/2010)

Heat pumps use electricity to extract heat from the environment, usually from the ground or the air. More than three quarters of the energy produced by the heat pump is available free from a sustainable, renewable source. Unlike other sources of renewable energy like wind and solar, the heat in the ground or the air is always available for use.

Although they are not carbon neutral (after all, they are powered by electricity), heat pumps typically generate three or four times the energy used to drive the system, making them exceptionally energy efficient and extremely cost effective.

Their environmental pay-offs are particularly impressive. They emit no CO2 at point of use so make less contribution to global warming than fossil fuel based heating. They are also tremendously energy efficient – they can provide up to 4kW of heat energy for each 1kW of energy used to power the system.

All this is contributing to a growing interest in heat pump technology. The Environment Agency has found that ground source heat pumps (GSHP) – also known as geothermal heat pumps, which generate heat from below the ground, could produce a third of the UK’s renewable heat by 2020.

Heat pumps are growing in importance as energy efficient building design moves up the building services sector’s agenda and more high profile individuals and organisations, including central Government, recognise their worth.

Heat pumps are an excellent example of high quality renewable technology that offers a huge environmental pay-off and a host of major benefits to both installers and consumers. The Government has acknowledged this with the recent announcement of plans for significant subsidies to be paid to owners of renewable heating systems like heat pumps through the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

Almost half of the UK’s CO2 emissions are generated heating buildings, mostly through the burning of gas and oil. Professor Mackay, the recently appointed Chief Scientific Officer for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said recently: “Setting fire to chemicals like gas should be made a thermodynamic crime. If people want heat they should be forced to get it from heat pumps. That would be a sensible piece of legislation.”

Other members of the Government also see the advantages of heat pumps. Tony Grayling, head of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at the Environment Agency, said: “Ground source heating is a rapidly growing technology that has the potential to produce at least 30 per cent of the country’s renewable heat needs, but it needs financial support in order to grow. We would like to see this technology given adequate financial support through the new Renewable Heat Incentive to meet its full potential in the UK.”

Along with better financial support, the changing commercial environment could also herald a boost in heat pump installations. For example, the Government is considering radical changes to the planning system to cut carbon emissions. Under the proposals, homeowners, developers and businesses will be able to install their own air source heat pumps without the expense and red tape of planning permission.

The UK ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems market is already on the rise, having doubled in the last year alone. There are an estimated 8,000 GSHPs in the UK, but if Government introduces sufficient support for them, this could increase to over a million. In its new report, Ground Source Heating and Cooling Pumps – State of Play and Future Trends, the Environment Agency predicts: “The ground source pump market is expected to grow until 2020 and no periods of stagnation are anticipated.”

The Environment Agency constructed growth and high growth scenarios starting from the 2009 baseline. The rate of market expansion under each scenario is determined by assumptions made about market barriers and the effect of the Renewable Heat Incentive.

The growth scenario suggests that in 2020 there will be 320,000 GSHP systems installed, with an annual installation rate in 2019 of 40,000. The high growth scenario predicts an annual installation rate that is a factor of ten higher, at 400,000 in 2019, and results in a total of 1.2m installed systems.

The RHI – which will be introduced in 2011 and will pay homeowners and businesses a guaranteed price for generating renewable heat – will be crucial in determining how much the GSHP industry grows. The draft proposals on the RHI from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) outline the scale of subsidies to be offered and the methodology for delivering them. The RHI payments, which will guaranteed for 20 years or more, are designed to offer a 12% return on investment for anyone who installs a renewable heating system. This scheme has the potential to revolutionise the UK market for heat pumps when it is introduced in April 2011.

BSRIA is upbeat about the prospects for heat pumps. It predicted in a recent report: “High and often unpredictable fossil fuel prices and building regulation and energy efficiency legislation designed to reduce greenhouse gases will become the key drivers for growth for alternative heating technologies such as solar thermal, heat pumps, heat recovery ventilation systems, as well as future gas-powered cogeneration systems. The UK government adoption of Zero Carbon Homes in the UK from 2016 is likely to favour electrical heat pumps to become the leading technology, often with lower power between 4 to 8kW, in line with decreasing demand for space heating.”

BSRIA forecasts the UK heat pump market will experience double-digit growth between 2009 and 2013 as the technology gains widespread popularity thanks to an increasing stream of qualified installers and promotional activities by manufacturers and increasing interest by energy suppliers.

It added: “HVAC products are improving all the time, air to water electric heat pumps in particular, are now competing and impacting on the growth of the boiler market. While boilers can provide heating and hot water only, an increasing number of heat pumps suppliers are promoting systems where heat pumps provide space heating, sanitary hot water and additional comfort cooling. Integration of heating systems has become very important, as increasingly solar thermal collectors are combined with a heat pump as a way to minimise energy cost to consumers while promoting a complete renewable solution.”

GSHP systems collect heat through a pipe loop buried in the ground or immersed in water. The loop, acting as a heat exchanger, collects heat and transfers it, through the heat pump system, into buildings. They can provide space heating, hot water and even cooling unlike conventional boilers.

Air source heat pump (ASHP) systems use the outside air as their energy source. In fact, heat pumps are able to extract heating energy from the outside air in temperatures as low as -25 deg C. Whilst not quite as efficient as GSHP systems, ASHPs do not require ground works for the laying of pipes, one of the major costs for ground source heat pump systems, which considerably reduces the cost and time taken for the installation works. The space required to install an air source system is also very much less than other systems.

“North Sea gas is running out fast and other sources of gas may prove unreliable over time,” Murray Treece, Managing Director of Norwich-based heat pump specialists, Econic commented. “The UK needs to use other ways to heat our buildings and heat pumps are one of very few viable alternatives to provide the central heating and hot water we’ve become used to.”

Related categories:  Ground and air source heating