Opinion: let's prioritise helping those in energy poverty over grants for costly heat pumps
The Government is pledging hundreds of millions to subsidise heat pump installations that are only available to people with £1,000s to spare while millions are facing the choice of heating or eating this Winter.
The Government has just announced additional funding for a scheme that provides grants of up to £7,500 to people able to install heat pumps in their homes.
It said that up to 300,000 households could benefit from “home upgrades” in the next 12 months to “help households of every kind take up measures that can help save money on their bills and deliver cleaner heating”.
This includes the Boiler Upgrade Scheme which will help people switch to a heat pump, saving families around £100 a year compared to a gas boiler and insulating more homes, potentially saving them around £200 a year, the Government said.
To fund this, it is allocating an extra £30 million to the boiler scheme this financial year and will almost double the budget to £295 million for the 2025/26 financial year.
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Over 3 million people are still in fuel poverty
Now let's consider the plight of people struggling to afford their heating costs this Winter.
There are currently 3.2 million people in Britain in fuel poverty, according to Government figures.
This is 10 times the amount of households that might be in a position to afford to benefit from heat pump grants.
According to National Energy Action, the fuel poverty charity, households in fuel poverty pay on average £417 more per year for energy than they would if they were in more energy-efficient housing.
A poll this year for the charity by YouGov revealed that three in 10 British adults have struggled to pay their fuel bills, with half turning off their heating when the weather is cold.
The charity fears that these households could still be in fuel poverty by the end of the decade, even though it is legally supposed to be outlawed in England by 2030.
A third are households with children (1.2 million), while 2.1 million are the homes of vulnerable people.
The average annual energy bill has soared from £1,276 in October 2021 to around £2,100, even with the Government’s £400 energy bill subsidy.
Fuel poverty: desperate measures
Half of these households go to bed early to stay warm (49%) and only heat one room in their home (45%), while over a quarter (28%) leave their curtains closed all day or are reduced to covering their windows with newspaper in an attempt to conserve heat.
Should the Government really be splashing out cash on heat pumps when millions are suffering and having to choose between whether to heat or eat?
And it's worth remembering the Government has actively contributed to this by scrapping the Winter Fuel Allowance for many pensioners: official analysis found that up to 100,000 more people will be forced into fuel poverty as a result of the change.
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Many people can't afford heat pumps
Heat pumps might offer savings of £100 a year to your energy bills, but they can cost 10s of thousands of pounds and are no good unless your home is incredibly well insulated to start with.
Even after the £7,500 grant, it’s still estimated that homeowners will still have to spend £6,000 on average towards the cost of installing them.
So if saving money is your primary concern, it's unlikely to pay dividends.
We got a rough quote for ground source heat pumps for our house when we were moving two years ago and were shocked to find they would cost £40,000 to install.
We’d made money on the sale but there was no way we could afford that.
Plus, half of our new house is very old and was definitely not well insulated enough.
Grants for insulation and support for those in fuel poverty
What we should be doing is handing out more grants to improve energy efficiency that don't require people to stump up £1,000s to benefit.
Not to mention doing a better job of supporting individuals and families struggling to make ends meet and having to choose between whether to heat their homes or feed themselves.
No one should have to make this choice.
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