Following recent revelations that UK’s home gas boilers emit twice as much CO2 as all power stations, the construction sector is being urged to accelerate the switch to greener heating solutions such as CO2 heat pumps, which have been described as ‘the future of green heating in the UK’.

The government’s target of 600,000 heat pump installations per year by 2028 is an encouraging step but Tim Rook, Chief Markets Officer at Clade Engineering, a leading designer and manufacturer of CO2 heat pumps, is concerned that the UK is a long way off the pace from hitting that target.

“Burning natural gas has historically been a cheap, reliable and relatively safe way to heat buildings in this country. But as this study shows, things are going to have to change if we have any hope of reaching Net Zero. CO2 heat pumps are the future of green heating in the UK – they are more efficient, cleaner and have a lower total cost of ownership than gas boilers,” explains Tim.

“We need to step up – and that’s going to take more awareness and more clamour across the construction, facilities management, property investment and property management industries,” suggests Tim.

The recent energy price crisis adds further weight to this argument and has been caused by several long, medium and short-term factors coming into play at the same time. It’s been coming down the tracks for a while, and touches on a couple of things that Clade Engineering consider extremely important – the decarbonisation and security of Britain’s energy supply.

“Installing a heat pump is one of the best things a business can do to decarbonise, and it’s fairly straightforward if engineered correctly. A heat pump will deliver a 60 to 80% carbon reduction and when used for cooling too it’ll do even better. If plugged into a digital platform to optimise performance and provide grid flexibility services it will be able to deliver even more carbon reductions and cost savings.

“For the good of the planet, we need to pull our collective fingers out,” says Tim.