Government to Review Heat Pumps After Noise Concerns

Undated photo of a heat pump. (Octopus Energy/Handout via PA)

The government will oversee a review to address if the widespread adoption of heat pumps might result in excessive noise burdens if many of them are fitted in residential areas.

Talking at the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee last Tuesday, Rebecca Pow, minister for environmental quality and resilience, said The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [Defra] raised the issue of noisy heat pumps with the Department for Business and Trade.

Heat pumps are part of the government’s strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, with a target of 600,000 heat pumps installations by 2028.

“Of course, while Defra is responsible for protecting the environment and this area, an awful lot of the levers are in other departments,” said Pow.

“A lot of them are conducting their own research. We highlight the issues to them, and a good example of that would be heat pumps and the business department,” Pow said.

“There is obviously a proviso in favour of those things from that department, but we have highlighted the issue of noise and now it has commissioned a piece of work and research on the impacts of the noise,” she added.

The findings of the review are to be published in the summer.

Heat Pumps

Heat pumps, which run on electricity and work like a fridge in reverse to extract energy from the air or ground, operate at around 40 decibels and can get up to 60 decibels, about as loud as a refrigerator to an air conditioner.

Mike Foster, CEO of the industry body representing gas heating specialists The Energy and Utilities Alliance, told The Epoch Times he believed it would be wrong to just look at the noise of an individual heat pump.

“But to look at the collective degrees of every house in a neighbourhood having a heat pump being on at the same time because there are different prospects to the noises,” he said.

“It won’t be just 50 decibels, it will be 200 homes on an estate emitting 50 decibels and what that might do to the neighbourhood and cumulative background noise,” he added.

Last year The Institute of Acoustics published a briefing note that they have the “potential to cause significant adverse effects to people living nearby.”

In 2022, the UK Noise Association submitted evidence to the government that said that any measures to decarbonise heat in homes should “take full account of the noise impact they may have.”

It warned that pressure to meet a 2024 deadline will mean the installation of heats pumps could cause noise disturbance in a situation similar to the “last Labour Government’s rush to get onshore wind turbines installed.”

This, it said, resulted in many turbines “which have caused people very real noise problems being given the go-ahead.”

Net Zero

The UK has signed into law a policy to achieve net zero by 2050 with the Conservative government setting out a strategy called “Build Back Greener” to decarbonise all sectors of the UK economy.

According to its Heat Pump Investment Roadmap strategy, released in April, reducing the UK’s carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2050 means it must decarbonise the heating of over 30 million homes across the UK in a little over 25 years.

The government claims that a heat pump can reduce carbon emissions by up to 70 percent compared with a gas boiler. It plans to phase out the installation of new and replacement natural gas boilers by 2035 at the latest.

Last year the government allocated £450 million to the scheme, which will cover around 90,000 households. Environmental activists have called for the scheme to be extended.

The UK’s Climate Change Committee projects that by 2050 all heating in British homes will be provided by low-carbon sources, of which 52 percent will be heat pumps.

If it is extended to cover all 23 million homes currently using a gas boiler, the scheme could cost £115 billion, according to a study conducted by the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), a UK pressure group campaigning for a low-tax society.

‘Very Rare’

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson told The Epoch Times by email that “heat pumps are a proven means of decarbonising heat in homes and businesses across the UK, replacing gas boilers which are less efficient.”

“We are determined to upgrade heating systems across the country, expecting uptake to rise and fully confident our target of 600,000 heat pumps installations by 2028 will be met,” he said.

“These are located outside the home and typically have sound levels similar to a fridge,” he added.

“Issues with noise emissions from them are very rare and technological advances mean heat pump models have become quieter over time,” he said.