Heat Pump Industry in the UK

The UK has a populace of about 60 million people with around 23 million dwelling in rural areas. More than 20 percent of energy is consumed by the population, which is used for home and water heating in the domestic arena. There is an annual increase of 3 percent in the domestic segment as a whole and 1.4 percent of total energy is used for domestic space heating.

Heat pumps are mostly used in commercial or institutional buildings in the UK. According to a recent report by the IEA Heat Pump Centre, there were 600,000 heat systems installed in the commercial sector in the UK during 2000. At present, the annual heat pump systems installed were estimated to be 70,000 units. A majority of commercial buildings in the country have installed reverse cycle split systems, where not more than 1 percent of heat pumps are being used to generate heat. The overall use of air conditioning in the UK commercial sector has been calculated to be around 25 percent. Furthermore, the heat pump industry is expected to flourish even further in the air conditioning sector, because of the increasing use of alternative sources such as heat energy, recycled prepaid energy, ground source heat pump systems and exhaust air heat recovery systems.