The Value of hybrid heat pumps

In households not connected to mains gas, electric heat pumps offer the opportunity to provide high efficiency low carbon heating as an alternative to electric heaters, LPG or oil based systems. As a result this technology is an ideal heating solution for the 4 million households in the UK that don’t have access to mains gas. However, electric heat pumps also offer large scale carbon savings when used for heating in the 22 million households that do have gas as well as mains electricity. In these applications hybrid heat pumps present an attractive opportunity for reducing fossil fuel consumption. In March 2013, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a document entitled “The Future of Heating: Meeting the challenge”. This report predicted that by 2030 approximately 26% of the UK’s heating energy output will be met by air source heat pumps alone, and as much as 56% will be met by hybrid systems