Petition to increase heat pump usage within the UK

Among other influential organisations in the heat pump sector, the Heat Pump Federation is petitioning the Government to reduce the social and environmental levies on electricity to support the mass roll out of heat pump installations across the UK.

The UK imposes levies of 23% on the price of electricity to raise money for social and environmental programmes. By comparison, the levies on gas are less than 2%. This government policy actively works against the plans of the UK Government to decarbonise household heating! Changing the UK’s heating systems to ones based largely on electricity is one of the main methods to achieve this.

This petition urges the Government to transfer the levies from electricity onto gas to make sure the incentives are properly aligned to encourage people to run heat pumps without being penalised for doing so. As things stand, it is cheaper to use polluting fossil fuels rather than much greener electricity for heating. Improving the financial case for homeowners and landlords to adopt heat pump technologies will reduce the emission of global warming gases, improve urban air-quality, and encourage the long-term supply chain for heat pumps. Using heat pumps to harvest on-shore thermal resources reduces fossil fuel imports and so contributes both to fuel security and improving the UK’s balance of payments.

The UK cannot hope to achieve 600,000 heat pump installations a year by 2028 until it reduces the artificially inflated cost of electricity. To support the case, sign the petition by clicking on the link and adding your signature: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/588159 and please do share widely to encourage as many signatures as possible.