Heat pumps branded ‘duds’ by MPs as boffins discover ‘extremely harmful’ chemical inside

Heat pumps are nowhere near as environmentally friendly as touted, MPs and boffins are claiming. They allege there’s been a failure to address the powerful refrigerants used inside heat pumps, which can have a significant climate impact, hundreds of times greater than carbon dioxide, if released through leaks or a failure to maintain the technology.

Some eggheads are warning the issue has received little public attention, despite refrigerant emissions being recognised by governments and regulators as an important source of greenhouse gases. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith and Greg Smith MP told the Daily Star the pumps are “damaging the environment”.

“The government is obsessed to the point of disaster over net zero,” the MP said. “Heat pumps are very expensive to buy and fit. They are built and sold by China, which uses slave labour and yet the government turns a blind eye to such abuses.

“The government also buys solar arrays that power many of these pumps yet they too are built using slave Labour. Now we understand that they also damage the environment. Because of this we have the highest energy costs in the developed world. ‘

Tory MP Greg Smith, shadow parliamentary under-secretary for Business and Trade, said the pumps are “duds” and consumers need to be given “more options”.

He said “Yet again, eco-zealots have jumped up and down to grab at the first technology on the shelf – demanding everyone buys one or be condemned as anti-green, but guess what, heat pumps are found to be not that great for the environment after all.

“Decarbonisation needs to lean into real technologies, the work of our great innovators over the long term and stop plumping for these dud products that have been rushed to market without a whole system analysis.”

Heat pumps often contain a substance called refrigerant difluoromethane, more commonly known as R-32, which does serious damage to the environment if it leaks.

R-32 has a global warming potential of 675, meaning that over a 100-year timescale one kilogram causes 675 times the warming of a kilo of carbon dioxide.

Genevieve Plant, a researcher at the University of Michigan, has voiced concerns about the damage heat pump gases can do. She said: “Most refrigerants used today have large global warming potentials and so it is important to keep them out of the atmosphere.

“They are growing in abundance and it is a problem that cannot be ignored as we become more dependent on these types of systems.

“This is the reality. Heat pumps have been pushed as a universal climate-friendly solution and I don’t know that there’s been quite enough consideration of all of the dimensions.”

The Government offers generous grants of up to £9,000 to replace fossil fuel systems in people’s homes. A campaign promoting the grants reads: “Heat pumps are three times more energy efficient than traditional boilers, meaning they’ll substantially reduce the carbon footprint of your home, and because they run on electricity, there’s potential to make bill savings too by using smart tariffs with cheaper off-peak rates.”

A Department of Energy spokesperson said: “Heat pumps run on electricity, reduce carbon emissions by around 70% and save households over £100.”