Heat Pumps

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord is right; we will require a massive upgrading of the national grid. That is proceeding and we have plans in place for it. Ofgem has authorised tens of billions of pounds-worth of expenditure to upgrade the grid. This is a transition; we gradually need to move away from gas supplies and gas boilers, and on to electrification of heat and electric vehicles. It will happen over time, but it is happening.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have had two air source heat pumps for the last 10 years, and I somewhat regret it. With the median heat gain for air source heat pumps at 2.8, and the electricity-to-gas ratio of 4, they do not make sense. I ask my noble friend the Minister, and indeed all Members of the Chamber, if they would be so good as to speak to their local plumber—if they can get hold of him or her—and ask them the question that I asked, as to whether it is in any way possible to imagine 600,000 installations per year, given the level of training that would need to be given to plumbers to do that.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There are a number of parts to my noble friend’s question. First, on expanding the supply chain, he is of course right, but there are thousands of new installers being trained every year. I spoke to MCS, which is the trade organisation, and it is registering new companies every week to do this installation. We are funding training courses under the heat training grants. However, the main part of his question is about the price differential between electricity and gas. He is right—we need to rebalance those costs, and the Government will issue a consultation on that later this year.