“One of the key measures to honour these investments and secure further investments in our industry in Europe is the need for long-term policy clarity both at EU and national level including significant limitations on the sales of boilers” said the European Heat Pump Association in a joint statement with NGO and industry partners representing close to 200 organisations in the sector.
The intervention comes as recent tensions within the German government over phasing out fossil fuel heating have escalated to EU level and could heavily water down EU efforts to ensure clean heating for the whole continent. This is just one example of recent wavering by politicians on the promise to transition away from gas heating.
“I speak to many heat pump manufacturers on a daily basis, and the uncertainty is having a very concrete impact already” added Andreas Scholz – Head of Sales at DATA AHEAD, an organisation supporting heat pump manufacturers scale-up. “For the past 2 years, companies have been racing to keep up with the EU’s high ambitions, and the market has massively expanded. But now I see examples of companies reducing their orders on manufacturing lines, or deciding to rent a plant rather than building, because of the mixed signals from politicians. Manufacturers absolutely need a reliable policy framework and clarity about the future demand for heat pumps, to carry out their investments. Instead, politicians have first been proposing new policies that provide a clear market path but then casting doubts about these policies, or worse, retracting them. It means manufacturers are not making the strategic long-term investments that are required.”
The heat pump market has record sales year on year and grew by 39 percent in 2022. However, growth needs to speed up even more to meet Europe’s goal to decarbonise heating by 2050. The industry points to this only being achievable through a stable long term policy framework in favour of clean heat; too many current policies still favour fossil fuels in subsidies and taxation.
“Policy makers must set clear long-term targets to drive building renovation and replacement of fossil fuel boilers with heat pumps, in line with RePowerEU” said Rowena Rodrigues – Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Glen Dimplex, an electric heating manufacturer with 8,000 employees group-wide. “This needs to be driven by a supportive policy framework, but most of all, by price signals which promote the use of clean electricity over fossil fuels.”
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