The government is exploring the possibility of giving consumers a £7000 grant to ditch their gas boilers and install a heat pump in its place.
Styled as a sort of boiler scrappage scheme, the grant would be given as part of the government’s Clean Heat Grants, a programme designed to help people move to low carbon heating options. The scheme, set to launch in April of next year, was originally budgeted for £100million to allocate grants of £4000 over two years.
However, The Times reported over the weekend that Boris Johnson is planning for a beefed-up scheme that would quadruple the budget: £400million over three years with grants starting at £7000. The aim is to help the nation pay for some 60,000 new heat pump installations, which the government hopes will kickstart its longer-term goal of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.
Currently, about 35,000 heat pumps are installed per annum, costing significantly more than fossil fuel options. It is hoped that with a rapid increase in heat pump installations in the UK, economies of scale will bring that cost down to be more in line with gas boilers.
While there has been no official government announcement on changes to the Clean Heat Grants scheme, The Times says Boris Johnson has asked his chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, to draft the prime minister’s more ambitious plans, ready for launch next year.
“The Treasury is not opposed to the principle of the scrappage scheme,” a government source said to The Times. “It’s worried about the design and whether it will be effective. The prime minister is fully behind it though. He sees it as a key announcement in the run up to Cop26.”
