The UK government is committed to achieving net zero by 2050. Heat pumps are a central tool in the decarbonisation of home heating – currently responsible for around 15% of the UK’s carbon emissions.

Since the publication of the government’s Heat and Buildings Strategy in October 2021, which details the path the UK will take to make heating buildings greener, heat pumps have been making headlines. Media stories often include stories of people who’ve had good or bad experiences of heat pumps, with many expressing scepticism towards technology and branding them expensive and unreliable.

Less than 1% of heating installations per year are heat pumps. The other 99% are mainly installations of high-carbon heating systems such as gas boilers. This means that, beyond anecdotal evidence of people’s experiences of owning and running heat pumps, very little is known about how the average householder feels about their heat pump and how their experiences compare to those heating their homes with fossil fuel-based systems such as gas boilers.

To better understand what the experience of owning a heat pump is like and how it compares to that of the majority of households that are heated with gas boilers, we commissioned Eunomia, an independent environmental research consultancy, to run a large-scale survey of heat pump owners.

The survey went out to owner-occupiers in England, Scotland and Wales who had an air source or ground source heat pump installed at least six months earlier. The questions covered topics such as:

• overall satisfaction with their heat pump (including space heating, hot water, noise and ease of use)
• likelihood to recommend a heat pump to friends and family
• the experience of the heat pump installation process
• heat pump costs and financing
• types of properties
• heat pump maintenance and servicing experience

In order to be able to benchmark the results, we ran a similar survey with a group of gas boiler owners to better understand how the experience of having a heat pump compared to the much more common experience of living in a home that is heated by a gas boiler.

The project ran between August 2022 and February 2023. We published the results of the survey and adjacent analysis in early 2023.