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cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22128148
Experts from a “nudge unit” have been hired to help ministers fight misinformation about heat pumps to try to encourage take-up of the devices.
The appliances run on electricity instead of gas and are regarded as a way of decarbonising homes at scale. A target of installing 600,000 a year by 2028 is part of a drive to achieve Britain’s commitment to reach net zero by 2050.
However, misinformation shared in the media and by “other stakeholders” is impeding uptake, according to a £100,000 government contract awarded to the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), which specialises in ideas to “nudge” the public into taking different actions.
The contract awarded to BIT contains details of a previously unpublished research by the Department for Energy.
It found that individuals who self-reported that they knew a fair amount or a lot about heat pumps were less likely to want one. However, people who correctly answered a simple knowledge question about heat pumps were more likely to want one.
BIT is finalising a large survey of householders’ views and coverage in the media that will be used in planning how the government will push back against misinformation.
“Information about heat pumps is being shared by the media and stakeholders, which may be skewed to negative, incorrect or exaggerated stories of heat pump adoption,” says the contract, which cites examples including claims that the pumps are noisy, cost too much to install and are not reliable and don’t work in older homes.
Articles about heat pumps in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph were cited in the document, which states that some of these stories “are generally well-founded, such as believing that heat pumps are expensive” but adds that some include incorrect misconceptions, such as believing they might not work well in the cold.
“Online information which is imbalanced or skewed towards incorrect and exaggerated claims could be considered an environment where misinformation is a problem,” it reads.
Heat pumps are great… if your house is well-insulated. I’ve heard that many houses in the UK are quite old and would need expensive insulation retrofits to make a heat pump viable. The issue is that while a heat pump is extremely efficient it is very slow at pulling heat out of cold air. This means it needs to run for very long cycles (up to 24 hours continuously) in order to slowly warm up the house.
If the house is poorly insulated and draughty then you may be losing heat faster than the heat pump is able to replace it. This would cause the heat pump to run nonstop as the temperature in the house gradually falls.
Source
Those debunks are misleading. Each one uses a different set of assumptions. In one they claim that you don’t need good insulation to use a heat pump. In another they claim that heat pumps work fine in very cold temperatures. But their source for the second claim is from countries like Norway, Finland, and Sweden which have the best insulation in the world. If you combine bad insulation with very low temperatures then the system cannot keep up.
People always worry about the worst case scenario. If your heating system is working fine for 364/365 days per year, that is a failure. On the coldest day of the year, when the temperature inside the house is dropping to uncomfortable levels and everyone is shivering while the heat pump is running at maximum (and making a lot of noise while doing so) then people will report a bad experience and clamour for their gas boiler to come back.
I have the luxury of having a dual system (gas furnace and heat pump) and I can tell you that on the coldest days of the year the heat pump cannot keep up, the furnace gets turned on automatically. The heat pump is also very noisy when it is working at full capacity. This is not the case most of the time (during shoulder seasons) but it definitely occurs during the heart of winter. My house is extremely well-insulated (though still well below Nordic standards).
You still have and use a heat pump though. The propaganda in the UK is telling everyone that heat pumps are not perfect, so best throw up your hands and keep burning fossil fuels forever. In reality some combo of insulation, heat pump, and backup system can work just fine.