The most powerful tool for rapidly decarbonising heating in buildings and homes is the humble heat pump. How powerful? The International Energy Agency’s recently released analysis estimates that potential global carbon dioxide emissions reductions from heat pumps can reach at least 500 million tonnes in 2030. This would be akin to eliminating the annual CO₂ emissions from all of the cars in Europe today. Evidence from the IEA underscores the ‘why’ of switching to heat pumps while the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), CLASP and the Global Buildings Performance Network offer further insights on the ‘how.’ The three organisations collaborated to create a toolkit to help policymakers develop packages to drive the heat pump market and deployment of the technology at scale. On 15 December 2022, the Electrification Academy welcomed the lead author of the IEA report, Yannick Monschauer, and two of the heat pump toolkit authors, Richard Lowes of RAP and Matt Malinowski from CLASP. They shared:

• Highlights and conclusions of the IEA study The future of heat pumps, including examination of barriers and solutions for heat pump deployment.
• The principles and tools in A policy toolkit for global mass heat pump deployment.
• Examples of actual policies and best practices for coordination.

We were delighted to have Caroline Haglund Stignor from RISE moderate the session.