We need to switch to heat pumps fast – but can they can overcome this problem?
People in the UK need to adopt heat pumps and electric vehicles as fast as they once embraced refrigerators, mobile phones and internet connection according to a new report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
This government watchdog says the next 15 years will be critical for decarbonising the UK, one of the world’s largest (and earliest) carbon polluters. Eighty-seven percent of its climate-heating emissions must be eliminated by 2040 to keep the country on track for net zero emissions by mid-century, per the report. The majority (60%) of these cuts are expected to come via a single source: electricity.
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Out of possible alternatives to a fossil fuelled economy, electrification has emerged as the favoured solution of experts at the CCC.
Ran Boydell, an associate professor in sustainable development at Heriot-Watt University, agrees. “Home boilers will very soon move into the realm of nostalgia,” he says.
Read more: UK ban on boilers in new homes rules out hydrogen as a heating source
The reason why heat pumps are increasingly touted as the future of home heating – and not retooled boilers that burn hydrogen instead of methane – is efficiency.
Boydell points out that green hydrogen fuel is made using electricity from solar and wind farms. We could eliminate emissions a lot quicker, he argues, if that electricity went directly to heat pumps instead.
“This is because you end up with only two-thirds of the energy in the hydrogen that you started with from the electricity,” he says.
Likewise, battery-powered vehicles have an advantage that has allowed them to race ahead of hydrogen fuel cells to comprise almost a fifth of all new vehicles sold in the UK in 2024.
“An electric vehicle can be recharged wherever there is access to a plug socket,” say Tom Stacey and Chris Ivory, supply chain experts at Anglia Ruskin University. “The infrastructure that exists to support hydrogen vehicles is limited in comparison and will require extensive investment to introduce.”
Read more: The days of the hydrogen car are already over
If the route to zero emissions is largely settled, we need to travel it quickly.
Electric dreams
One of the fastest energy transitions in history occurred over a decade in South Korea, according to energy system researchers James Price and Steve Pye (UCL). Between 1977 and 1987, the generation of electricity from oil in the east Asian country collapsed – from roughly 7 million gigawatt-hours to nearly 7,000 – and was replaced with, among other sources, nuclear power.
There are historic analogues for the rapid shift necessary to arrest climate change. But a zero-carbon power sector, which the UK government aims to achieve by 2030, is just the start.
Read more: For developing world to quit coal, rich countries must eliminate oil and gas faster – new study
“Wind and solar, which provide more than 28% of the UK’s electricity, will soon overtake gas as the main generation source as more wind farms come online,” say energy system modeller Andrew Crossland and engineer Jon Gluyas, both of Durham University.
“But successive governments have failed to achieve the same result in homes and communities where so much high-carbon gas is burned, despite their decarbonisation being critical to net zero.”
Read more: Is Britain on track for a zero-carbon power sector in six years?
Crossland and Gluyas note that solar panels, batteries and heat pumps can be installed “in days” to rapidly cut emissions, and that doing so would create “skilled jobs across the country”. As things stand, however, it would also present a severe challenge to the grid.
Mechanical engineer Florimond Gueniat of Birmingham City University predicts that converting UK transport to battery power wholesale would require expanding grid capacity by 46% – the equivalent of erecting 5,800 skyscraper-sized wind turbines. And that’s even accounting for the greater efficiency of electric vehicles, which waste less of the energy we put into them compared with oil-powered cars.
Read more: Switching to electric vehicles will push the power grid to the brink
A massive upgrade to the electricity network is needed, and ordinary people have a part to play. Charging cars could serve as batteries that grid operators draw from during a supply pinch. The same goes for the power generated by solar panels on top of houses.
“Such policies in Germany have … already offset 10% of the national demand,” says Gueniat.
Getting to net zero requires the public’s involvement. But some of the CCC’s advice may be difficult to swallow. Not least the implication that people will have to eat 35% less meat and dairy in 2050 compared with 2019.
So are people ready for a world that runs on electrons alone? Aimee Ambrose, a professor of energy policy at Sheffield Hallam University, thinks heat pumps will struggle to compete with the inviting warmth of wood stoves and coal fires. Over three years she spoke with hundreds of people in the UK, Finland, Sweden and Romania and found strong attachments to high-carbon fuels even among people committed to solving climate change.
Read more: Heat pumps have a cosiness problem
Human behaviour is the most difficult variable for experts who study climate change to model. There will certainly be drawbacks to abandoning fossil fuelled conveniences at breakneck speed. Yet, there are bound to be benefits too – some of which might only materialise once we get going.
In mid-April 2020, while much of humanity was under some form of lockdown to halt the spread of COVID-19, atmospheric chemist Paul Monks of the University of Leicester was marvelling at the sudden drop in air pollution, which kills millions of people each year and is predominantly caused by burning coal, oil and gas.
“If there is something positive to take from this terrible crisis, it could be that it’s offered a taste of the air we might breathe in a low-carbon future,” he said.
Read more: Coronavirus: lockdown's effect on air pollution provides rare glimpse of low-carbon future