Where are all the heat pumps?
When it comes to low carbon heating, heat pumps are a hot topic. But which areas are fastest at adopting heat pumps and which areas are lagging behind in uptake?
The map below shows how common it is for homes to have a heat pump across Great Britain. The brighter the colour, the more heat pumps per total number of homes. Yellow areas have the highest uptake, blue areas have the lowest.
Have you discovered any patterns yet?
When putting the map next to one showing the number of properties (yellow=highly populated), it becomes obvious that heat pumps are much more common in rural areas and relatively rare in densely populated areas. Cornwall, East Anglia and especially the Highlands and Islands of Scotland are among the leading areas for heat pump uptake.
Why are heat pumps more common in rural areas?
First, rural areas and especially islands are often off the gas grid. Homes generally have to use oil or Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) instead, which are costly in both financial and carbon terms. In off-grid areas a heat pump is an attractive option when people’s old boilers reach the end of their lives.
Secondly, heat pumps require space for both their indoor and outdoor components, which is more likely to be available in detached or semi-detached houses in the countryside. It is more challenging to find a suitable place for a heat pump in more densely populated areas, as the outdoor fan unit cannot stand too close to another building. Heat pumps are most common in detached houses, which tend to be more common in the rural areas.
And finally, heat pumps are most frequently installed in homes that are owned rather than rented. We don’t know exactly why this is, but suspect it is linked to owner-occupiers having more stake in how their home is heated than private landlords. Rental properties are less likely to have a heat pump and are more common in urban areas, giving another explanation for why urban areas are slower to adopt heat pumps.
While the trend shows that uptake is higher in rural areas, heat pumps do work in urban areas as well. As they become more popular and more affordable, we hope to see more heat pump installations around cities — and all across Great Britain. This is part of our challenge at Nesta: let’s make those blue areas disappear!
Play around with the map
Have a closer look at the interactive map, zoom in and explore the different layers representing heat pump uptake, population density, rate of owner-occupied homes and homes off the gas grid. Display and select the layers on the top right corner of the map. Hovering over the map reveals more information for each area, for example, the absolute number of heat pumps installed or the Index of Multiple Deprivation Decile.
One caveat to bear in mind: for computing the heat pump uptake percentage, we retrieved the number of properties per area from the EPC Register. Since only roughly 50% of all GB properties have an EPC record, we must assume that the percentages are actually slightly lower. For the same reason, percentages regarding owner-occupied and off-grid properties are not precise. However, this map is still helpful for studying trends. In short: don’t worry about the percentages, just look at the patterns.
All data regarding the number of heat pumps and the number of properties is retrieved from the EPC Register, aggregated with data about MCS-certified heat pump installations.
