When Bill Tuck first started installing air source heat pumps six years ago, other heating engineers were skeptical about whether the green technology would take off. “Now, the conversation is completely different,” he said.
“I’m getting approached by them saying: ‘Mrs Jones, my customer for ۱۵ years, she’s enquiring about a heat pump. What can you tell me?’ The whole narrative has changed.”
But despite a surge in interest in cheap and sustainable ways to warm homes, the government is understood to be slashing the amount of money available to subsidise heat pumps as it looks for ways to cut spending in Wednesday’s budget.
Businesses that install the renewable systems are fearing the worst. “It’s going to damage us as a company,” said Tuck, the operations director at Sustain Homes in Watford. About ۷۵% of his customers pay for their pump using the government subsidies. “It’s the foundation of the business. If that’s to go, it’s extremely damaging.
“Of course, we will do what it takes to keep everybody’s jobs going and the business afloat. But it’s a tough one – I don’t know how we will do that.”
The boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) was introduced in ۲۰۲۲ to help people decarbonise their homes and businesses. It provides upfront grants worth up to £۹,۰۰۰ to help property owners replace fossil fuel and direct electric heating systems with low-carbon alternatives such as heat pumps and biomass boilers.
Heat in buildings is responsible for approximately nearly a fifth of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, the latest government data shows. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has described the ۲۰۲۰s as a “critical decade for decarbonising heat”, but now appears to be putting the cost of decarbonising on to the consumer. The UK lags far behind other European countries with heat pump installation; Norway, the global leader, has ۶۳۲ installed for every ۱,۰۰۰ households, while the UK has a paltry ۳.۵.
Jim Lacey, who has been installing renewables with his business JLN Plumbing & Heating for ۲۰ years, said: “No one’s going to save the planet if it really hits their pocket.”
“We can go in [to homes] now and go: ‘It’s a few hundred pound more than having a normal boiler, but you save so much on your energy usage.’ That whole argument’s gone.”
Adam Killa, the founder of Ask Renewables in Burscough, Lancashire, saw what happens when subsidies are removed after the ۲۰۲۲ closure of the Renewable Heat Incentive, a scheme that paid households for generating clean heat.
“As soon as that stopped, we went from doing six, seven, eight [installs] a week down to zero. The customers say: ‘Well, I know they’re good, but ۱۵ grand – I can buy a new boiler for three grand. What’s the point?’
While the government continues its drive to increase numbers of young people earning while learning, heat pump installers say cuts to the subsidy will put their apprentices – and the future of the industry – are at risk.
“Unless we start bringing the young generation through, we’re going to have a huge lack of installers, repair engineers, and more importantly, heat pumps as well,” said Tuck.
A nascent industry, installers fear manufacturers will go under too. According to the Heat Pump Association, about a third of heat pumps sold in the UK in ۲۰۲۴ were produced domestically.
“This isn’t just down to us fitting the heat pumps, it’s the people delivering them, it’s the people manufacturing them, it’s all the associated trades that go with it that make the little bits, the little bobs, everything,” said Lacey. “There’s so many knock-on effects”
James Meadway, an economist and co-director of the green thinktank Verdant, said removing money from green jobs and manufacturing would damage Andy Burnham’s mission to effectively reindustrialise Britain. “It’s at a point where his blank spot on climate is working hard against other things he wants to do,” he said.
Lacey said that, while he had not thought the grant would last for ever, he had expected business and consumers to be weaned off gradually as the technology became more widespread and production costs fell. “But to suddenly axe some off the BUS grant or get rid of it completely is just catastrophic for all the work that we’ve put in so far,” he said.
A government spokesperson said: “We do not comment on budget speculation.
“We remain committed to bringing down bills for families now, while investing in the clean, homegrown energy and warmer homes that will protect households from volatile fossil fuel prices for good.”
