News analysis with BESA
Industry facing major heat pump skills challenge
The industry must urgently upskill its workforce to deliver the government’s target of 600,000 annual heat pump installations by 2028, according to the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA)
T
he Association welcomed new research that supported the case for wider adoption of the technology and additional funding for training but said the industry’s skills gap threatened to undermine the UK’s strategy for decarbonising heat. More training resources will be vital to increase the number of installations and improve the overall performance of the technology, it believes. The government announced a further £9.2m of funding to subsidise or provide free training courses in heat pump and energy effi ciency installation across England late last year and a demonstration project found that heat pumps were suitable for every type of UK home. The Electrifi cation of Heat Demonstration Project,
which was funded by the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), did however illustrate the need for more innovation to overcome some of the barriers to a widespread roll out of the technology including cost and disruption. There were more than 8,000 applications to take part in the project in three diff erent regions of the UK – with 742 heat pumps eventually installed. All the diff erent property types were suitable and energy effi ciency upgrades were needed for just 15% of the homes assessed, the researchers found. Just 8% lacked the necessary outside space, 2% did not have room for a thermal store such as a hot water tank or for larger radiators, and in just 4%, the cost of installation and/or additional measures such as insulation made a heat pump uneconomic.
Potential
“This project shows the huge potential for heat pumps, but a key factor will be the industry’s ability to meet demand with a suitably trained workforce,” said BESA’s director of training and skills Helen Yeulet. “We are facing a race against time to keep the decarbonisation of UK heat on track.” She added that upskilling to become a heat pump
installer was a great way to “future-proof your business while helping homeowners and businesses reduce their energy bills and contributing to our long- term battle against climate change”. Heat pumps are seen as a pivotal technology in
the process of reducing the carbon impact of heating buildings. BESA believes there is a strong argument for speeding up their deployment along with other carbon reducing technologies because many UK commercial buildings face the threat of becoming ‘stranded assets’ when new minimum energy standards are introduced on April 1 this year. From that date, landlords will not be able to sign new leases with tenants unless the building is assessed and achieves an Energy Performance Certifi cate (EPC) rating of ‘E’. That will rise to a ‘C’ in 2027 and a ‘B’ rating in 2030. As many as 24,000 offi ce buildings are thought to still be outside the ‘E’
threshold and up to 63,000 will have to dramatically reduce energy consumption by 2030, according to Estates Gazette. Property analysts also believe that almost 1.4
billion sq. feet of UK retail space could become unlettable by 2030. So, thousands building owners are looking at their options for cutting energy from heating as quickly as possible with heat pumps seen as a relatively easy way to upgrade heating systems without the cost and level of complexity needed to switch to completely renewable upgrades. On top of this, the government has outlawed the use of gas boilers in new build homes from
BESA’s director of training and skills Helen Yeulet
8
February 2023
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