Heat Pumps

Lord Birt Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

A huge amount of research has gone into it. We reckon that about 90% of homes in the UK are suitable for heat pumps. Obviously, there is a wide variety of different homes; the area that the noble Lord and I come from has a lot of terraced properties. You can use ground source heat pumps with common arrays in the road, and you can use heat networks that have one remote location powering the heat pumps. There are a number of different technologies where this is perfectly possible.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, we languish not only very close to the bottom of the European league table of heat pump installation but at the bottom of another European league table: the ratio of the price of electricity to gas, with electricity being far higher. The Minister has discussed the matter before. When will we rebalance that imbalance in the UK?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

If the noble Lord had been paying attention earlier, he would have noticed that I answered that question in response to my noble friend Lord Leigh. This is a difficult political issue—I will not shy away from that fact—but the Government are aware that we need to make progress on it, and we will issue a consultation this year.