Heat pump installations in the UK have already exceeded last year’s total, setting a new milestone for the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) with three months still to go in 2024. By the end of September, 42,000 installations were completed—outpacing 2023's total by approximately 4%.
The UK government is launching the Warm Homes Grant in 2025, an exciting initiative aimed at helping homeowners make their properties more energy-efficient. This fully funded scheme is available to those who meet certain criteria and could significantly reduce your energy costs while lowering your home's carbon footprint.
This week, the UK's last coal power station closed, signalling that the country’s energy landscape is undergoing a massive transformation. For over 200 years, coal was king, powering industry and homes alike. But today, renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro are rapidly replacing fossil fuels in the national grid. With that change comes a new challenge—and opportunity—for those of us in the heating and plumbing industry.
With the UK election out the way and a new government in place, we feel it’s important to explore the potential implications for the heat pump market now that Labour has taken the helm. For plumbers, particularly those considering diversifying into heat pump installations, Labour's anticipated measures could present significant opportunities in the evolving green energy sector.
The UK remains overly dependent on natural gas, according to the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), which provides independent recommendations to the government.
In its recent annual assessment, the NIC highlights the urgent need to reduce reliance on high-cost, high-carbon natural gas and accelerate the adoption of heat pump technology to meet the ambitious net zero targets by 2050. According to the Commission, decarbonising buildings is a critical aspect of this transition and represents the single biggest challenge on the path to net zero.
Once the heat pump is installed, commissioned and signed-off, for many installers that’s it. Job done. Well here at Alto we like to do things a little bit differently. As far as we’re concerned, the installation of the heat pump is just the first chapter, and once we’ve put our name to a heat pump by commissioning it, we want to make sure that the homeowner is happy.
The developer’s own installers have installed the heating systems with the help of Alto Energy’s schematics, free heat pump training and unlimited telephone technical support. Once this is completed, all that needs to happen is for our commissioning engineer to come to site, check everything over, and sign it off!
Once a customer has decided to proceed with heat pumps, we need to make sure that the project is designed properly and fully MCS compliant. To do this, every single project we do is thoroughly reviewed by our Technical Director and Compliance Officer, to ensure that all the benefits of heat pumps are realised.
In this blog series we look at just how easy it is for property developers to incorporate heat pumps into their latest housing developments. We will follow a live project for 5 plots in Yorkshire with one of our regular developer customers, and describe each stage of the journey, highlighting how Alto Energy can bring value and convenience to your project.
