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Are heat pumps the answer?

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What is a heat pump?

https://youtu.be/stDvHBialJQ

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What are heat pumps and how do they work?

They do the opposite of your fridge at home
A heat pump doesn’t create heat like a gas boiler. It moves heat around
They take heat out of the air (or ground or water) and pump it into your house.
A heat pump uses electricity to run.

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https://www.cse.org.uk/advice/renewable-energy/ground-source-heat-pumps

What are heat pumps?

Watch this video to hear about heat pumps

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Main types of heat pumps

Ground source heat pump
Air to air source heat pump
Air to water heat pump

https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Infographic-The-future-of-heating-in-UK-buildings-Committee-on-Climate-Change.pdf

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What do the experts say?

The Climate Change Committee say that we need to heat most UK homes with heat pumps (instead of gas or oil boilers) to reach our climate change targets
Heat pumps can be the cheapest heating system to run – although homes needs to be well insulated
Hybrid heat pumps (half heat pump/ half normal boiler) or biomass boilers can also be used in very large, or old and draughty homes

https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/development-of-trajectories-for-residential-heat-decarbonisation-to-inform-the-sixth-carbon-budget-element-energy/

Question: How many heat pumps do we need to fit in the UK each year to reach our 2050 target?

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We have a long way to go!

We need a lot more heat pumps!

And a lot of people have never even heard of them!

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/beis-public-attitudes-tracker-summer-2022

Question: how is your home heated?

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But it is possible!

https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/heat-pumps/top-countries

Norway has one heat pump for every four people!

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Why do we think we haven’t fitted many heat pumps yet?

Advantages	Disadvantages
..	..

It might help to think about some of the advantages and disadvantages of heat pumps compared to traditional oil or gas boilers

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Why do we think we haven’t fitted many heat pumps yet?

Advantages	Disadvantages
More efficient – more heat for the same amount of energy Lower carbon dioxide emissions Cheaper to run Safer – no fuel which could catch fire Less maintenance Can cool as well as heat Last a long time There are government grants available	More expensive to fit Not many people know about them Not many people know how to fit them Not as well understood as traditional boilers Can be noisy Many houses will need better insulation or bigger radiators for them to work well

It might help to think about some of the advantages and disadvantages of heat pumps compared to traditional oil or gas boilers

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What do we need to do in the UK to meet our targets?

Add some ideas to this table
..

It might help to think about what might make it easy for your family to get a heat pump?

Together as a class, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of heat pumps. Think about why we have targets set on the number of heat pumps we need to fit and why these are difficult targets to reach.

What could be done to make it easier for us to reach these targets and who would need to make these things happen? Think about what might make it more likely for your family or school to fit a heat pump.

Some things to consider:

Policies to make it cheaper:

Cost of fitting
Cost to run - electricity is more expensive than gas, but heat pumps are very efficient.

Better and more training for heating engineers

Where do heating engineers learn how to fit oil and gas boilers? Is that route available to them for heat pumps?
Do schools and colleges need to teach these skills?

Increased awareness:

Is this something the government can help with? How?

Is there anything we can do as students?

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Visit https://energysparks.uk for more activities about renewable forms of energy