With the new Heat and Buildings Strategy encouraging the use of heat pumps - now is a good time to revisit the IOR paper "Why don't people install heat pumps?" available free here to download.

This paper considers why the annual UK installation rate of heat pumps is relatively low in comparison to other countries and questions the source of 'green' electricity required for a large heat pump fleet.

It covers electrically driven vapour compression air source heat pumps (ASHPs) for domestic and light commercial building sectors, providing on-gas grid and off-gas grid locations are considered, for:

  • domestic hot water (DHW) plus space heating via low pressure hot water (LPHW)
  • domestic hot water (DHW) plus space heating via warm air

This paper focuses on ASHPs, and doesn't include direct heat pump systems, because the number of heat pumps required to replace natural gas boilers and satisfy UK carbon reduction targets is not possible with ground source technology.

 

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7 Oct 2026

Registration is now open for the next IOR Industry Skills Alliance meeting, which will take place on 19 November at Leeds College of Building.
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Adaptation 2027 Draws Strong Interest with Nearly 70 Accepted Abstracts

1 Oct 2026

Close to 70 abstracts have now been accepted for the 2nd IIR International Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures (Adaptation 2027), highlighting growing global interest in addressing the challenges that a warming world presents to the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump (RACHP) sector.

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