The Government has tried to make heat pumps more affordable through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, offering grants of up to £7,500 to homeowners towards the costs of installing low carbon heating systems.
However, the PAC report said: “We are concerned that most households receiving the Government’s £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant might be from more affluent groups, as they are more likely to be able to afford the additional costs and may have installed a heat pump even without the grant.”
Uptake has so far fallen far short of expectations, with £100m in grant money left unspent in the first year of the scheme.
Between May 2022 and December 2023, grants were used for just 18,900 heat pump installations in England and Wales, less than 40pc of the planned 50,000.
Government data shows that applications have since climbed and were up by 93pc year-on-year in April.
But according to the European Heat Pump Association, the UK’s heat pump rollout is the slowest in Europe.
The application process for the grants is also too complex and confusing, the PAC report warned. It called for DESNZ to set up a website that can give households clear information on heat pump installations, such as laying out the importance of installing insulation alongside a heat pump, and how this can affect energy bills.
Heat pumps use electricity to capture heat from either the air, ground or water to provide homes with heating and hot water without using fossil fuels. They are three times more energy efficient than gas boilers, and are powered using the grid, which increasingly sources energy from renewable means.
DESNZ must set out actions to further increase the number of people who are trained to install heat pumps, the PAC report said.
The Government is targeting 12,000 additional installers by 2025, with 7,000 trained so far. But the Heat Pump Association has suggestsd that the UK will need three times as many by 2028 – a total of 33,700 installers – in order to meet DESNZ’s overall installation target.
DESNZ said it was unable to comment in response due to the pre-election period.