The UK needs to move away from fossil fuel based heating to forms of electric heating like heat pumps

Heat pumps use electricity to extract heat from the environment, usually from the ground or the air around us. Over three quarters of the energy produced by the heat pump comes for free from a sustainable, renewable source. Unlike other sources of renewable energy like wind and solar, the heat in the ground or the air is always available for use.

Professor David Mackay, the newly appointed Chief Scientific Officer for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, has reiterated his support for heat pump technology in comments he made recently.

“Setting fire to chemicals like gas should be made a thermodynamic crime,” he said. “If people want heat they should be forced to get it from heat pumps. That would be a sensible piece of legislation.”

Professor Mackay made his comments as part of wide ranging analysis of the problems the UK faces in meeting the challenge of climate change. He believes that the UK needs to move away from fossil fuel based heating to forms of electric heating like heat pumps. The low carbon electricity needed will be generated from a big increase in nuclear capacity as well other renewable sources like wind and solar, according to Professor Mackay. Almost 50% of the UK’s CO2 emissions are generated heating buildings, mostly through the burning of gas and oil.

Some European countries, like Sweden have already moved to a low carbon electricity generating grid using a combination of nuclear and renewables. It’s no surprise that heat pumps are now used to heat nearly all new houses in Sweden.

“North Sea gas is running out fast and other sources of gas may prove unreliable over time,” Murray Treece, Managing Director of Econic commented. “We quickly need to useother ways to heat our homes and heat pumps are one of very few viable alternatives to provide the central heating and hot water we’ve become used to.”