Be part of the quiet revolution

Engineers, installers, and energy specialists are working every day to transition our dirty, fossil-fuelled and climate bashing heating systems to something cleaner, something futureproofed and something with far lower environmental impact: they’re fitting tens of thousands of heat pump systems that work brilliantly, cut carbon emissions, and reduce household energy bills over the long term. Installing heat pumps properly is therefore highly important, skilled work.

For homeowners this is a big investment, even with the significant government subsidy. In that context it’s vital that people looking to do something positive get the real picture and hear the full facts so they can come to a properly reasoned decision.

Yet the volume of positive press continues to be miniscule.

Instead, open the Daily Mail or the Telegraph on any given week and you will likely find a story about someone who had a bad experience. The heating bill that went up. The radiators that weren't quite warm enough. The installer who didn't size the system properly. These stories are real, and bad installations do happen - no industry is perfect. 

But the relentless, disproportionate amplification of every negative anecdote is not journalism. It is a campaign, whether editors realise it or not. 

Anecdotes are not evidence

The mechanics of this kind of negative media coverage are well established. Find a disgruntled homeowner who had a poor experience and – as a result - is vocal about it. Give them a platform. Frame her story as emblematic of a wider failure. Invite a sceptical commentator to pile on. Check that aligns to a party-political line irrespective of its veracity. And repeat.

What you almost never see is the counterweight: the tens of thousands of households whose heat pumps are running quietly and efficiently, whose owners are perfectly satisfied, and who have nothing to shout about precisely because everything is working as it should. 

Satisfied customers don't make headlines. They don't generate clicks. As a result they remain invisible, while the loudest voice in the room, however unrepresentative, continues to shape public opinion.

The cumulative effect on consumer confidence, and an industry critical to the UK, is devastating. For most political parties the growth of skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs is an economic holy grail – and cannot be replaced by AI. Heat pumps, and other net zero technologies, remain critical to growth: high value, job-sustaining growth with low environmental impact. 

Alan Milburn’s very recent report on the future prospects of a forgotten generation of young people is a case in point. This could, and should, be a growth industry with long term potential. It doesn’t matter what colour politics you inhabit. Heat pump technology, however, is being tried and convicted in the court of tabloid opinion before most people have had a chance to generate an informed opinion.

It’s not JUST the media, though

The fossil fuel industry - oil companies, gas suppliers, and the businesses that depend on continued demand for boilers and gas appliances - has enormous, vested interest in slowing the transition to electrified heating. And enormous financial resources to defend those interests. The result is an ecosystem in which scepticism about heat pumps is well-resourced and well-organised - while the industry making the transition happen struggles to get a word in.

This isn’t conspiracy. It is just the rational behaviour of industries facing existential disruption, deploying the tools available to them, but we should call it what it is.

What the Headlines Don't Tell You

According to government statistics, the heat pump industry installed just over 11,000 heat pumps in 2020. By 2024 this had risen to over 48,000. By 2025 this had risen by a further 7% to nearly 52,000. That’s the official government stats. 

According to the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, the figure for 2024 was closer to 60,000, a 43% increase on 2023. 

We also need to bear in mind that heat pump deployment in new build is largely excluded from these numbers, and with the arrival of the Future Homes Standard in Building Regulations, gas boilers are finally banished to the dustbin of heating system history.

So - the number is growing year on year, and the vast majority of those installations work exactly as intended. Independent studies, including research by the Energy Systems Catapult, have consistently shown that well-specified and correctly installed heat pumps deliver reliable, efficient heating across a wide range of UK property types, including older homes that sceptics insist are unsuitable. 

Join the (increasingly less) quiet revolution

Heat pumps are not experimental. They are not even innovative. They are proven, deployable, and slowly scaling up. 

The good, experienced and certified installers doing this work are professionals navigating genuine complexity: buildings of wildly varying age, fabric quality, and thermal performance; customers with varying levels of existing knowledge; an electricity grid in transition; and an incentive landscape that continues to offer valuable incentives (at least for the next couple of years). They deserve recognition, not a media environment that treats every imperfect installation as evidence of systemic failure.

You can find out if they’re suitable for you, how much they cost, and what the benefits are, all tailored to your home, for free, by visiting www.thermly.co.uk. There’s also a £7,500 grant available for eligible homeowners, and we help sort that too. You’ll also get a £250 John Lewis voucher when you install something through Thermly.

And finally because you’re an Ecohustler subscriber – we’ll give you another £50 for every friend, family member, acquaintance, work colleague, and man or woman you meet on the bus who also installs something through Thermly too. There’s no limit to the number of homeowners you recommend either.