HEAT PUMPS
Six impossible things before breakfast
Professor Dick Powell of Refrigerant Solutions asks: “Is the UK installing the right type of heat pump?”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Lewis Carroll, ‘Through the Looking Glass’
Dick Powell
'Having splurged out £10K in 2025 for an air-to-water heat pump, a householder may resent fi nding a further £2k for a split a/c unit for the bedroom to get a good night’s sleep and a further £2k to cool the lounge.'
L
istening to the latest regulations disseminated by governments, the HVAC industry can sometimes feel like Alice. But unlike the Red Queen, who only has to ‘believe’, the industry must actually fi nd ways of making the impossible work. Refrigerant Solutions (RSL) is a company dedicated to the development of new refrigerants, so it not surprisingly spends signifi cant time and eff ort anticipating customers’ future needs as politicians impose ever-more severe restrictions. As a part of this strategy, RSL has recently been pondering the future of UK residential heat pumps and thus the properties of refrigerants needed for this application. But don’t jump straight to the fi nal paragraph of this article expecting startling revelations of marvellous new refrigerants. Although we have ideas, they have yet to be fully defi ned, and we try not to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. To phase out gas boilers, the UK Government has set a goal of 80% fewer new sales to existing homes by 2035, with no gas boilers being installed after this date. While homeowners will not be required to remove existing, working boilers, they will only be able to replace them with non-gas options once their current units gasp their last puff s of CO2
. Driven by government
policies and supported by grants, ‘monobloc’ air-to-water heat pumps are the major de facto replacements for fossil-fueled boilers in existing homes. New-builds must have low-carbon heating systems from this year (2025). Despite Government eff orts, the UK 2025 Climate Change Committee report to Parliament, seriously questions whether national preparations to deal with global warming are adequate. To quote from the summary: “Delivery of eff ective adaptation remains limited and, despite
some progress, planning for adaptation continues to be piecemeal and disjointed. The vast majority of our assessment outcomes have the same low scores as in 2023. In terms of adaptation delivery, we do not fi nd evidence to score a single outcome as ‘good’. Adaptation progress is either too slow, has stalled, or is heading in the wrong direction.”
This statement is rather wide-ranging but, in my view, might be specifi cally directed at monobloc heat pumps as
18 December 2025 •
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