Heat pumps have already replaced about 20 per cent of the boilers in Europe, but the war in Ukraine is resulting in even more consumers turning to the electric heating systems as a way to reduce demand for gas whose price as increased significantly.
Estonia sold 1,583 heat pumps per 100,000 people in 2021 and Poland sold 259 per 100,000 people, 25 times and 4 times more than the UK’s 63 respectively.
The ECIU estimated that if the UK had already installed the same amount of heat pumps per 100,000 people as Estonia, the UK’s domestic gas use would be 107TWh or 34 per cent lower than in 2021 and gas imports in 2021 could have been cut by a fifth.
Total numbers of heat pumps are also a lot higher in most of Europe compared to the UK, which has just 280,000 heat pumps installed. For example, France has 3.1 million installed and Norway has 1.3 million.
The UK’s ’Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme’, which aims to install 90,000 heat pumps over three years by...