The government has announced plans to encourage households to swap gas boilers with low-carbon heating options, including heat pumps.
A £5,000 grant will be offered to people living in England and Wales from next April as part of a £450 million Boiler Upgrade Scheme.
Currently, 22 million homes in the UK are heated by natural gas. The government says it wants no new gas boilers to be sold after 2035, following a national commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
You won’t be forced to remove your existing gas boiler. However, the aim is for households to gradually move away from fossil fuel boilers over the next 14 years, with more cost-effective greener alternatives available to make it easier when the time comes to replace your gas boiler.
Heat pumps extract warmth from the outside air, the ground or from a water source, and then transfer it at a higher temperature to provide heating and hot water for homes.
At the moment, heat pumps are expensive, with prices reportedly ranging from £5,000 to £18,000, depending on the type of device and size of your home.
However, the government expects prices to come down significantly by 2025. Octopus Energy, a British renewable energy group, has already said they think they can reduce the cost of heat pumps to match natural gas boilers by April 2022.