Dr Jan Rosenow, the director of European programmes at the Regulatory Assistance Project and co-author of the report, said: “There has been a campaign spreading false information about heat pumps [including casting doubt on whether they work in cold weather]. People [in the UK] don’t know much about heat pumps, so it’s very easy to scare them by giving them wrong information.”
Heat pump technology has improved dramatically in the past few years, but the problem (at least here in the NYC metro area) isn’t efficiency, it’s initial expense. Most urban and suburban houses already have natural gas lines and will require breaker box upgrades to switch over to an electrical HVAC system. There are usually some kind of tax rebates available but people understandably don’t want to be bothered with that and would rather just take the cheaper option out of pocket, which depending on their setup and income may also be the cheaper option altogether.
No doubt that every western government on the planet will continue to write blank checks to the fossil fuel industry while demanding that the public makes this switch but maybe they can also get 5% back if they jump through hoops.
In larger older cities in the US, the barrier to adoption tends to be landlords
100%. owner-occupied homes are incentivized, landlords do not give a fuck. if i was a wonk lanyard and didn’t find landlords to be the enemies of all mankind, i would craft policy to require any home let out for rent to have a yearly energy audit and meet the highest levels of energy efficiency for all appliances, climate control, and be fully electrified in preparation for grid decarbonization.
I think some euro countries require inspections on rental units every few years