We have recently published a heat pump running costs and emissions calculator, available for all to use, running on the cloud! Click on the button below to go straight to it.
First, enter a few details about your annual energy consumption, such as total use and some information about how you use energy (for example your hot water usage). The calculator then provides a like-for-like comparison between a gas boiler system and a heat pump system in terms of your annual bill, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption. The image below shows an example screenshot of the annual bill details.
Here's a few things we've learnt along the way:
Heat pump running costs are similar or very slightly below (1-10%) typical gas boiler running costs, provided the heat pump installation achieves decent performance, with energy prices set at the current energy price cap.
Getting a 100% renewable energy tariff is still an important part of reducing your emissions: getting a heat pump without a 100% renewable tariff reduces most households emissions by ~55% - to get the rest of the way the renewable tariff is needed.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good: while we would encourage everyone to get the highest performing heat pump installation they can, most of the carbon savings are achieved with a typical heat pump installation. The further on-going financial savings of a high-performing installation are about £120/year for the average household.
A heat pump can save households between 35 - 80 tonnes of CO2 emissions over a 20-year lifetime, if switching to a 100% renewable energy contract at the same time - see the image below for what a single metric tonne of CO2 looks like.
Image credit: Carbon Visuals