The Climate Change Committee (CCC) said this week that all new and replacement home heating installations should be low carbon (mainly heat pumps) by the middle of the next decade, and that half of all homes should have heat pumps within 15 years.
The Plumbing & Heating Federation – the new name for the Scottish and Northern Ireland Plumbing Employers’ Federation – responded that without a trained workforce to install them, these targets are just empty ambitions.
Fiona Hodgson, chief executive of the Plumbing & Heating Federation, said: “Heat pump adoption cannot be driven by wishful thinking. The CCC and successive Westminster and devolved governments keep setting ambitious targets while ignoring the fundamental issue: there simply are not enough trained professionals to install them.
“Without serious investment in skills training and workforce expansion, the UK will fail to meet its heat pump targets. All governments need to stop offloading responsibility onto businesses and take action to ensure we have the people to deliver this transition.”
The CCC’s recommendations follow newly obtained Freedom of Information data from Home Energy Scotland (HES), highlighting the scale of the challenge. Since 2019, fewer than 9,000 heat pumps have been installed under the Home Energy Scotland Grant & Loan Scheme and the Private Rented Sector Landlord Loan Scheme in Scotland, nowhere near the number needed to meet the CCC’s targets.
To stand any chance of success, heat pump installations would need to increase by 200-fold, a target that is impossible to achieve under current workforce constraints, the federation said. Policymakers continue to overlook the severe shortage of qualified installers, placing the burden on businesses instead of providing meaningful support, it said.
The Plumbing & Heating Federation also emphasises the need to address the spark gap – the imbalance between electricity and gas prices – which remains one of the most significant barriers to heat pump uptake. If electricity stays significantly more expensive than gas, homeowners are unlikely to switch, regardless of policy encouragement.
Fiona Hodgson continued: “We are in a perverse situation where government policy tells people to transition to electric heating, yet energy pricing actively discourages them from doing so. The public will not be persuaded to switch to a more expensive heating system in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Without serious reform to energy pricing, the transition to low-carbon heating will remain a pipe dream.”
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