Supporting the UK’s heat pump installation drive

Reed in Partnership is delivering a heat pump skills bootcamp for Oxfordshire residents to help the country train up the workforce it needs to deliver net zero. Reed Environment Director, Tom Hoines, explains why this is important.

Changing the way that we heat our homes is one of the most important things we need to do to tackle climate change. Decarbonising home heating would wipe out around a fifth of the UK’s carbon emissions, but has numerous other benefits, from increasing national energy security to tackling fuel poverty and making homes healthier.

The good news is that heat pumps – one of the key low-carbon heating technologies that can replace gas boilers – are starting to really take off. The UK has recently passed the milestone of 250,000 certified heat pump installations, with 2024 on track to be a record-breaking year for the technology, according to the latest data from the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, the UK’s quality mark for small-scale renewable energy installations. Increasing numbers of households are accessing the Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme to get their gas boiler replaced, with applications up 73% from January to June 2024 compared to the same period last year.

While this is still a long way off the national target of 600,000 annual heat pump installations by 2028, the momentum is building, so we need to make sure we have sufficient installers trained up to meet increasing consumer demand.

This is why Reed in Partnership, with our training partner OEA, is proud to be delivering a heat pump skills bootcamp for OxLEP, the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership, funded by the Department of Education. It will enable participants to gain five qualifications within 16 weeks, all delivered from OEA’s Oxford site.

Training up existing oil and gas heating engineers to start installing heat pumps is key to supporting the momentum we need to build around heat pumps, to make sure that there are the skilled people there to support households and communities making the move to low-carbon heating. But it also offers great opportunities for people to reskill and build their careers and businesses in an affordable way. And in the longer term, we hope that some of these experienced engineers will play a part in helping to train up the next generation of new entrants to the industry.