The EU should be the heat-pump pioneer

Another issue with heat pump rollout, at least in the UK is a severe lack of qualified heating engineers with a basic understanding of thermodynamic principles.

Thus you get plumbers with experience installing gas boilers, resulting in poorly specified and installed systems that provide nowhere near the efficiency that they should reach.

This then leads people to say “heat pumps don’t work” or “heat pumps are expensive to run”, which only feeds into the whole anti net-zero rhetoric.

Yep, they should be, and now they are anything but. In Austria at least getting AC installed in any urban environment is de facto impossible. There is no law against it, but you need various approvals from multiple parties that you will simply not get. Moreover, Austrians are very against AC in general for various reasons.

I am trying to get AC installed and these are some of the responses I got:

> Air the room properly, wrap a damp towel around yourself and get on with it. With energy prices like these, that's just throwing money out the window, not to mention the environmental impact.

> I don't think it's bad yet. It's important to keep busy when it's hot, not to moan "it's so hot" and do nothing. Get used to the fact that it's getting hotter every year. Wear more clothes in the cold season. Get used to warmer clothes. Try to do more for the environment. Drive less, throw rubbish in the bin instead - don't get lazy, vote for parties that tackle the climate crisis and don't deny it.

> I just sit around in my underwear and sweat, I prefer it.

I can't even...

Pioneer? Nearly every home in the US already uses heat-pumps: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/technology-adoption-by-ho...

In cold climates many people still use gas heating because its cheaper, making electricity cheaper would be the only realistic way to increase heat-pump usage in winter.

Heat pumps prices here keep going UP, not down. The very same machine cost more after few years. There is no chance to keep up such conversion at these rates.

I'm one of the few who have built a new home, all electric main car included, and yes even friends and parents told me it's a mistake, it will cost much more heating and cooling or it's even impossible to heat and so on. There is much resistance but the real point are prices. Similarly to BEVs.

In other places prices drop, that's why sales goes up, here they do the opposite and that's why sales goes down.

Yeah but there is heavy resistance.

My mother won't install a heat pump because she claims she doesn't want to be dependent on electricity. She likes the idea that if it goes down, she can still heat her home.

It is irrational because her gas burner needs electricity to run anyway, and if electricity shuts down, she lights a wood fire, which she could have as an alternative to the heat pump.

Humans have religion-like behavior in every aspect of their life, not just God-related things.

If you haven't heard about the French pushback against the linky, a smart electricity meter, google it. You will have a good overview of what can go wrong if we force the issue on people.

Can this really be solved without proper insulation? I’m from a cold place with excellent insulation, and everywhere else I’ve been in the world, it subjectively feels like the heat is disappearing half an hour after turning off the heat source. This includes places that gets near freezing cold in winter. Like trying to empty a leaking boat with a bucket.

Its a long studied management theory that most companies in the lead in trying to protect its current profitable product ie cash cow hesitate in innovating as it would destroy their current products market share. This results in competitors coming from behind and out innovating them and stealing market share. This is what is happening to Europe and it's manufacturing industries

I mean a ton of heat pumps are being installed. New houses tend to have heat pumps. The problem is with old houses who already have a heating system installed, it is crazy to overhaul to a heat pump as the cost is not even close to being sensible.

We tried to do this by law in germany and it almost ended in a civil war.

I don't quite get why we insist on air/ground<->water systems, instead of just using aircon and heating the indoor air directly?

There's a saying that I've been hearing since being a kid, that heat pump sucks because it's just instantaneous heat but as soon as you turn it off, the heat disappears in an instant.

Based on my experience, it's true. As for the other people. it must be true too, because the norm in my southern country is to have installed proper radiators all around the house. Family, friends, formal visits, I wouldn't be able to name even once in my life that I've been at someone's main place during winter without its proper radiator installation. And when it is turned off, the whole building is warm, not only the air in the living areas, so the place stays warm for a long time.

So heat pumps exist but just as a "not very good" alternative, relegated for things like small secondary homes at the beach (where it doesn't get too cold anyway).

EDIT- I was thinking about the aircon that on winter can be switched to output warm air. But reading replies I'm now learning that heatpump doesn't necessarily always mean air, but radiators could also be used!