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With roughly 360,000 heat pumps currently installed across the UK, the country remains a long way off the government’s target of installing 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028, as laid out in the Energy Security Bill. But where do people currently stand on their journey toward using heat pumps? What barriers are holding back wider adoption, and how do these challenges vary across society? Most importantly, what can be done to overcome them?
Nesta’s new audience research helps to answer these questions by providing a segmentation of UK households based on demographic data, their housing situation and attitudes towards heat pumps. Ranging from “eco, high-earning Gen x-ers” — of whom 3% say they already have a heat pump — to “social tenants on tight budgets”, the report identifies the biggest heat pump enablers and barriers for each group to help them adopt the new technology.
And help is urgently needed: As Climate Barometer data shows, public knowledge of heat pumps remains limited, with only 37% of Britons knowing what a heat pump looks like, 22% saying they can describe how a heat pump works, and just 17% having heard mostly good things about them. Alongside this, 1 in 5 Britons have heard and agree with the statement that “heating technologies to replace gas boilers are untested and unreliable”, compared to only 1 in 10 who have heard the argument and disagree with it.
But for heat pumps to become a widely adopted source of heating over the next couple of decades in the UK, it will require more than fixing their image problems. Those who would already consider switching to a heat pump need to be supported to do so practically, and those who are currently unable to or hesitant about installing them need safe assurances that heat pumps will actually improve their comfort and help lower their energy bills over time.
The government’s newly published Local Power Plan points the country in a direction that the British public support: clean energy that’s transparent, affordable, and delivers real benefits to communities and their local environments.
Our latest Climate Barometer tracker shows that people across the UK are in agreement on the top priorities for new infrastructure in their area. These are: the project’s impact on the local environment, what it means for energy bills, and whether it benefits the local community.
Though their order varies slightly, these three priorities are consistently the highest for all groups across age, gender, region, social grade, housing tenure, political affiliation, education level, ethnicity, and whether they live in urban or rural areas.
People’s views on climate change and net zero were fairly low on the list, highlighting (at least when it comes to specific clean energy projects) that local impacts and practical considerations loom larger for the public than the salience of climate change as a wider issue.
This doesn’t mean joining the dots with the risks of climate change and the benefits net zero can bring isn’t important – it’s crucial. But getting the delivery of policies like the Local Power Plan right is a key route to rebuilding climate salience and shoring up support for the wider net zero programme.
The government’s newly published Local Power Plan points the country in a direction that the British public support: clean energy that’s transparent, affordable, and delivers real benefits to communities and their local environments.
When we asked about the three most important factors for involving local communities on infrastructure proposals, both the public and MPs were most likely to select “clear, plain language information about the project and its impacts” and “being asked for views early, before decisions are made”. These were followed by “a clear explanation of how views influenced the final decision” for MPs and “independent or trusted organisations running the process” for the public.
When we asked which 3 factors people felt were most important in terms of influencing their support or opposition for local infrastructure projects, they picked: the project’s impact on the local environment, on energy bills and on the local community as the top considerations.
These three priorities are consistently the highest for all groups across age, gender, region, social grade, housing tenure, political support, education level, ethnicity, and whether they live in urban or rural areas; a rare point of alignment between these different subgroups of the public.
Strikingly, what made much less of a difference were people’s views about climate change and net zero.
This doesn’t mean that belief in (or concern about) climate change isn’t a critical foundation on which to build engagement around clean energy in general (this is the core idea behind linking the ‘how and the why’ on net zero, as we argued in our recent message testing work with Public First).
But when it comes to specific clean energy projects, the local impacts and financial considerations loom larger: as the transition becomes ever more place-based, this trend is only likely to accelerate.
Like support for the 2050 net zero target, support for renewables comfortably outpaces opposition. And people are much more likely to consider renewables as the route to building energy security than fossil fuels.
But there is a creeping growth in support for oil and gas – wrapped up in the very same conversation about energy security. Since the 2024 election, support among MPs for expanding drilling for oil and gas has inched up, driven by Conservative MPs pursuing an increasingly Reform-influenced agenda on domestic energy policy.
Yet, despite most Britons supporting clean energy, even when it means wind and solar farms in their local area, there remains a clear perception gap. As covered by Business Green, our most recent data shows that both the public and MPs continue to overestimate local opposition to these renewable developments.