Retrofitting biggest part of bill for fitting heat pumps to homes – ESRI report

Retrofitting will be the biggest element of the bill for fitting heat pumps to homes, economists confirm in a report published on Wednesday.

Government is pinning part of its greenhouse gas reduction hopes on homeowners fitting electricity-powered heat pumps to replace oil and gas.

A report by the Economic and Social Research Institute, due out on Wednesday, confirms that insulating homes to the B2 energy rating needed to support the pumps is the biggest element of the cost involved.

Researchers found that building the extra electricity generators needed to power this equipment only added up to 5 per cent to current costs if three out of 10 Irish homes were to fit heat pumps.

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However, they say there is a trade-off, as the cost of transmitting this energy to homes actually falls by up 1.5 per cent.

Senior research officer Dr Muireann Lynch, co-writer of the report, Decarbonising Heat through Electricity: Costs, Benefits and Trade-offs for the Irish Power System, confirmed that retrofitting homes amounted to the biggest proportion of the bill.

“This highlights the challenges associated with decarbonising residential heating,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Government earmarked €43 million for grants to homeowners to install heat pumps and insulate their properties.

Grants for heat pumps vary from €3,500 to €6,500, while the State will provide between €3,000 and €8,000 for external insulation and from €1,500 to €4,500 for internal insulation.

The cost of insulation rose sharply last year following a global squeeze on supplies of polymers used to make it.

Those products are made from oil, but a surge in demand following the end of Covid lockdowns combined with bad weather that disrupted the petrochemical industry in the Gulf of Mexico, where many of the raw materials used in insulation manufacture are produced, sent prices rocketing.

Demand has continued to put pressure on the cost since then, most sources say.

Heat pumps operate by moving warm and cold air around, so can be used to control temperatures during summer as well as to heat properties during winter. However, they need high levels of insulation to work properly.