£9bn due to not having built more cheap onshore wind, £5bn due to poorly insulated homes, £5bn due to low solar deployment, £3bn because new homes were built less efficient.
Heat pumps are great when the house is designed for it. Average uk house with shitty insulation and radiators that are unable to heat the room unless the water is really hot - it’s not going to work well.
I don’t see how and air to air heat pump wouldn’t work.
Insulation needs to be solved yes. But if you heating your house with gas verse electricity if the output is the same then the result is the same.
Something to do with physics. It’s not just about the heat output from a gas boiler vs heat pump. It’s the output from the radiator to the room that matters. For the same output, a gas boiler heats the water to a higher temperature than a heat pump. Which means a radiator gives out more heat to the room. As an extreme example, if it is freezing outside and the heat pump produces a lot of water at 15c, it may have a high thermal output but still wont keep your room warm. If it produces water at 30c, the radiator will transfer some heat to the room, but unless the radiator is very big or the room is well insulated, probably not enough.
Link me to a heat pump that produces water for central heating at 70C or more. Typically, flow temperature is closer 40C, which won’t heat the average house unless you increase (possibly double) the size and/or number of radiators. Which is expensive and not always feasible. You can run heat pumps at higher flow temperatures, but that reduces their efficiency. Don’t get me wrong, i think they are great. But successfully retrofitting to old UK housing stock needs expertise that is in short supply.
Houses that can’t be further insulated simply need a bigger pump and larger radiators to make it work. No need for 70 degree flow temps at all, though 50 is easily achievable. With the government grant Octopus are currently charging not much more than a gas install.
