Who’s going to install all the heat pumps we need?
The UK is going to need a lot more heat pump installers, as we and many others have been arguing for a while. But the best ways to grow the heat pump workforce aren’t obvious. More heat pump training for college students? Retrain gas engineers? Help existing heat pump firms grow? As an innovation foundation that’s already trying to tackle this challenge, it’s important for us to be clear on which of these we think is most likely to work, and which we think Nesta can play the biggest role in supporting. The aim of this article is to test our thinking on how the heat pump workforce will grow. And it turns out our thinking has evolved somewhat.
Growing the number of heat pump specialists
Scoping innovations to grow the sector requires a hypothesis of who’s going to be installing those heat pumps and the way they’ll be working. In other words, we need a persona or personas around which we can innovate. Presently, most domestic retrofit heat pumps are installed by specialist firms who work almost exclusively with renewable technologies. As a result, implicitly, this has been the model we’ve been assuming the heat pump sector will grow in. But what would accelerating this look like? And would it work? Let’s explore and reflect on a couple of project ideas.
Intensive training for new entrants
Following the success of the bootcamp scheme like that for hauliers, that has provided comprehensive training and rapid growth for an industry urgently needing staff, emulating that in the heat pump sector could be a potential route to impact. There is a skills shortage in plumbing and heating more broadly and the heat pump sector specifically also urgently needs new entrants. Following an intensive training programme, these people might be recruited existing heat pump specialist businesses as they expand, set up on their own as sole traders, or run their own small firms
There are limitations to this approach. First, it would take too long for these skills to enter the sector. Trainee hauliers have key prerequisite skills, for instance they can drive, and haulier training can take as little as a few weeks. By contrast, new entrants to the heat pump sector will need considerable plumbing training which may take a year or two. This thus relies on there being a cohort of jobseekers willing to take a long term punt on training for a career in what is presently an unfamiliar sector, a risk that is likely to be too great for many.
Second, it is unlikely to yield sufficient scale. The data show that though many people do plumbing and heating training, relatively few do training at a high enough level and do courses that include a vocational element. We’ve argued that we need 4,000 to 6,000 new full time heat pump installers to be entering the sector annually. If so, that would likely exceed the total number of suitably qualified trainees who are graduating annually across the UK.
Pivoting heating businesses
While many who work in plumbing enjoy working across a range of projects, from heating via luxury bathrooms and leaking taps, there are others who work solely in the installation of gas boilers and wet heating systems, and in their maintenance. Such firms could be prime candidates to pivot. Their staff would need only minimal upskilling and could quickly become heat pump specialists.
While we reckon that any individual or firm considering such a pivot is making the right call, both for the environment and the longevity of their business, the principal limitation is motivation. It’s a big ask for many firms as pivoting is time consuming, costly and may feel risky. This sits badly compared to the counterfactual, there being considerable work in fossil fuel heating now, their skills are in high demand, and the sector is currently relatively lucrative for those who are good at their job. The barriers are high and, at present, the motivations are low. This means, in the next few years at least, we think few firms are likely to make this step.
How we came to these conclusions
These conclusions aren’t meant to be negative or defeatist. Rather, our reflection on these approaches is informed by knowledge we’ve got from our own work and from reading that of others. We’ve done a couple of projects that have examined the experience of those working in the low carbon heating sector. One examined innovation gaps that could improve heat pump installer productivity, another is studying different approaches to supporting newly trained installers to use the skills they’ve developed through their training. Through both, we’ve got lots of deep qualitative insights. Two great reports have come out recently too, one from BEIS and another from Vaillant that provide useful quantitative insights into the sector.
It’s important to note that both the options set out above could be good ones to follow for both individuals or businesses that feel able and willing to pursue them. Indeed, in our research and engagement with those working in the sector, we’ve seen successful examples of each. However, there are two key reasons why it wouldn’t be right to focus on such approaches in our work. First are the questions of speed and scale, as noted above it’s unlikely that either approach would generate the capacity needed to meet decarbonisation goals. Second, it’s vital that we take the sector with us. However well designed a project or pathway is, if it doesn’t meet the needs of the installers and engineers whose skills are at the heart of the heating transition, it simply won’t be successful.
An incremental shift to heat pumps instead
There are around 130,000 gas safe heating engineers presently active. Vaillant’s work shows that while 82% of heating engineers they surveyed weren’t currently installing heat pumps, 88% of survey respondents did report having an interest in training in air source heat pump installations over the next twelve months. They were largely motivated by a desire to futureproof their business. A couple of caveats: first, interest waned when engineers understood both the cost and the time commitment of training; second, while Vaillant’s work looks good, it surveys members of its loyalty scheme only so it’s hard to know how representative their findings are of the installer community at large.
Nevertheless, the findings are still very positive. Even the most optimistic pathways to heating decarbonisation see the fossil fuel heating phase out taking over a decade. What we believe is most important now is that we get sufficient heating engineers working with heat pumps to allow the domestic retrofit sector to start growing. The UK government, local authorities and devolved administrations have been offering funding and other support for short courses, generally a week or two, for heat pump upskilling for existing fossil fuel trained engineers and take up seems to be good. However, there are two observations that are important to keep in mind.
The first is the risk that the enthusiasm that leads someone to upskill might decline once they face the relative complexity, compared to gas boilers, of taking on their first heat pump jobs. We’ve been speaking to participants on a local authority funded training course, seeking to understand how they intend to go on and use their newly acquired knowledge, the barriers that might hold them back, and studying the potential of financial incentives to encourage them to do so.
The second is a reflection on what someone’s career might look like when they use these skills. As noted above, even those tradespeople motivated to upskill are unlikely to be motivated or able to fully pivot their business to a new domain. They have long standing customers who might not be ready to make the switch to a heat pump, and quite reasonably they want to build their expertise in the new technology before making it the centre of their livelihood.
Where should Nesta focus?
These two observations frame our understanding of one element of the direction we think the heat pump sector is likely to take over the next few years, and where we think Nesta can most helpfully focus.
We think that substantial growth in the heat pump retrofit workforce will come from forward looking gas heating engineers, probably but not exclusively those earlier in their careers, gaining skills in heat pumps. We think they’ll upskill and that we’ll see that cohort building a career with a mixed technology portfolio. We predict that this will start from a relatively low base where heat pumps make up a relatively small amount of their work compared to gas, but that the proportion of heat pump work to gas will grow as time passes. They might become fully MCS certified but it’s more likely they’ll work with other companies or umbrella schemes, particularly at the outset.
This leads to a set of innovation challenges, and it’s in these areas that we will be building projects. Over the next year or so, we’ll be focusing on working with training course participants as they come out of their training, generating innovation that answers questions such as :
- How could we enable or motivate newly upskilled installers to make use of their new knowledge in heat pumps as soon after training as possible, so as to ensure the knowledge remains fresh and they maintain the momentum that led them to do the training?
- How could we help newly trained installers to see the growing demand for heat pumps that’s currently relatively invisible to them as most consumers, when looking for a heat pump, tend to go to a business focusing on heat pumps?
- How could we help to generate the peer support and sharing of expertise that newly trained heat pump engineers will need to give them the confidence to take on their first few jobs in the sector?
- How could we help this cohort overcome common barriers faced by those new to the sector, for instance the need to do a first heat pump installation that can be assessed by MCS before they’re able to offer installations eligible for funding from the boiler upgrade scheme?
In summary, by working with existing heating engineers we’re focusing on the biggest cohort of highly skilled people to bring pace and scale. By working adjacent to government supported training programmes, our aim is to amplify existing pathways rather than creating new ones. And, perhaps most importantly, at the heart of our work is the intention to work with the installer base, respecting their place as the skilled professionals whose expertise we need to make decarbonisation work.
Have we got this right? What have we missed? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
