The Challenges of Heat Pumps for Domestic Heating.

The financial and electricity burden caused by the electrification of domestic heating has been investigated and presented in this paper. The overall cost to achieve legacy housing improvement and widespread ASHP adoption is approximately £309 billion pounds between 2023 and 2050. The financial burden will vary for each household, but most of the burden falls on legacy housing from pre-1919 and gradually reduces as property age reduces to 1981-1990 period. Multiple fund schemes financed by UK Government and local authorities will ease the burden, but they are targeting low-income housing representing 21% of the domestic market and are only scheduled to operate until 2026. Further and clear financial support is required to encourage insulation refits and heat pump adoption. The increased electricity demand requires an installed plant capacity of 248 GW by 2050 with the generation split of 39% renewables, 32% CCCT with carbon capture storage and 29% nuclear, a 137% increase from the existing capacity. Despite no demonstrable case study for the scale needed, a cornerstone of the UK Government strategy is the deployment of carbon capture storage (CCS) technology as a reliance on natural gas is retained for secure grid flexibility while fulfilling the definition of 'Net Zero' (1). Without CCS, the total consumption of natural gas increases in an electrified society compared to retaining domestic natural gas boilers by 2.9%, thereby increasing annual emissions. If a completely renewable UK society was targeted by 2050 an installed capacity of 435 GW would be required, an increase of ten times the current renewable capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]