In November last year, the Prime Minister introduced a target to deliver 600,000 heat pump installs a year in the UK by 2028. The joint report published yesterday from @RegAssistProj, @e3g and myself sets out how best, we think, a heat pump mass market can be achieved (thread).

1st point, but this is important. The PM's target, useful and extremely challenging as it is, isn't as ambitious as the Climate Change Committee suggest is necessary, they suggest 900k heat pumps per year by 2028. https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/sixth-carbon-budget/

Currently, there is a major policy gap to achieving the PM's target, let alone the CCC's one. Well done to @enfinnEU for this excellent graphic!

Our analysis of international best practice in heat pump deployment suggests that only a combined package of measures will deploy heat pumps, well, fairly and at the speed required. We suggest 4 key elements.

1. Financial support, likely in the form of capital for households, at least in the short term, possibly on an ongoing basis, with higher support for the less-able-to-pay. This could be achieved via various policy routes but there is a clear equity and political angle here.

2. Structural incentives which reshape the market to support low carbon choices. Key options here are to 'rebalance' prices, moving current policy legacy costs from electricity to gas and potentially a carbon tax on gas. Good numbers @janrosenow

This would also have distributional impacts but, it would also provide benefits for electricity only households who are more likely to be fuel poor and currently pay for a higher proportion of legacy policy costs.

3. Regulatory backstops are needed to stop the installation of fossil fuel appliances too. Financial measures alone won't do it. These do not need to come in effect immediately, but should be introduced early to provide a clear signal to the market to support inward investment.

4. All of this needs to be pulled together with a robust governance framework which would support agile policy making, skills development, investment, coordination, equity etc. A 'Heat Pump Council' could provide an important part of this function.

Together, we think these elements could, fairly and rapidly, achieve a heat pump mass-market in line with net zero goals by the end of this decade while we move from incentives towards market reshaping.

The full report can be found here: https://www.raponline.org/knowledge-center/getting-track-net-zero-policy-package-heat-pump-mass-market-uk/

Final comment: this is a major element but this is just the heat pump element of heat decarbonisation. Energy efficiency delivery, heat network deployment, decisions on the gas grid, all need to happen at the same time.