The European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) has published data that shows an average fall of 23 per cent in 13 European countries in 2024 compared to 2023.

Two million heat pumps were sold in 2024 in those 13 countries, which make up around 85 per cent of the European market, compared to 2.6 million in 2023. This brings the total stock to around 26 million, slowing the heating market shift from fossil fuels to heat pumps.

As a result, the sector has contracted with at least 4,000 jobs cut with over 6,000 across the continent.

EHPA believes the slowdown is a result of three factors: 1) governments have changed support schemes for heat pumps, unsettling consumer confidence; 2) a sluggish economy with a cost-of-living crisis, and 3) the low price of subsidised gas.

“The heat pump sector is down but far from out”, commented Paul Kenny, director general of EHPA. “Consumers want clean heat and comfortable homes, and they want to support European jobs and energy independence. As soon as they can see it’s possible thanks to supportive EU and national policies, and taxes which penalise fossil fuels not people, they show this by turning to heat pumps.”

Out of the 13 countries the sharpest drops were in Belgium with 52 per cent lower sales and Germany with 48 per cent, but the UK bucked the trend; heat pump sales grew 63 per cent thanks to supportive government schemes.

The 13 countries surveyed were: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, UK.

In the UK, Labour has relaxed planning rules for heat pumps, and homeowners can now install the devices within a metre of their neighbour’s property. However, despite the increase, the governmental targets (600,000 heat pump installations a year by 2028) are still looking very optimistic, skills are in short supply, and installations can be variable, often not taking acoustics and vibrations into account. Here, even the DESNZ admit that local planning authorities do not have the capacity to cope with all complaints and a quarter of people living near a heat pump found the noise to be intrusive.

And here by lies the issue: the market needs capacity to create the skills and advance the technology to quieter more efficient units, but the capacity will not appear until more are installed, and objections removed.

---