A few dozen people had gathered on the dancefloor of the nightclub in eastern Germany when Stefan Vetter took to the stage, his face chequered by neon lights that bounced off spinning disco balls, and flicked through PowerPoint slides of homeowners and their heaters. “We know that oil and gas are not getting cheaper in future,” he said. The audience of mostly retired men nodded slowly along.
Versions of this unusual scene played out in towns and cities across Germany in November in a weeklong PR blitz to promote heat pumps – a clean alternative to gas-burning boilers. But rather than lecture citizens about climate or carbon, Vetter, an adviser at the Saxon energy agency, talked up the cash they could save.
The German energy agency hopes that a focus on cheap bills and attractive subsidies will widen the heat pump’s appeal beyond climate-conscious customers. It is a strategy being tested to the limit in far-right strongholds such as Bautzen, where the climate-sceptic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a third of the vote in September elections, and other regions where the Greens have become a political punching bag after pushing through an unpopular heating law last year.
“The heat pump was promoted in the media in a very wrong way,” said Luca Nozon from Energy Saxony, one of the event’s organisers, who had little success inviting people to attend the session when he walked around Bautzen that morning. “Even if you just take that word into your mouth … they say no and run away. They’ve heard so much wrong information that they don’t even want to hear the correct information.”
Heat pumps work like a backwards fridge, sponging unclaimed thermal energy from outside and bringing it indoors where it can warm a home. The International Energy Agency’s roadmap to greening the economy as fast as world leaders have promised shows the share of heat pumps in sales of heating equipment soar from 10% in 2022 to 50% in 2026.
While cold Nordic countries with cheap electricity and high carbon taxes embraced heat pumps decades ago, negative media campaigns have turned them into a polarising force in countries such as Germany and the UK. Norway has 635 heat pumps for every 1,000 households, while Germany has 47 and the UK just 15. Sales in the two countries also lagged far behind their neighbours’ last year, industry data shows.
To catch up, the German energy agency staged 200 public events as part of a heat pump information week in November that it said drew in 50,000 citizens. Under the banner “simply inform”, its experts busted common myths about the devices, explaining that heat pumps work well in cold weather and modern devices make about as little noise as a fridge.
But more subtly, they played on ideas of status, scarcity and security to win over middle-class conservatives and other demographics who are unmoved by environmental arguments. Energy advisers asked the audience who among them thought gas prices would still be the same in a decade; whether they had benefited from subsidies for solar panels, which Germans across the political divide have embraced; and if their friends or neighbours had bought a heat pump.
The strategy could win over risk-averse homeowners who fear they will be left behind as carbon taxes rise and late adopters are left to foot the bill for a gas grid whose costs will be carried by fewer customers. It also builds on research that finds people are more willing to adopt clean technologies if they see other people doing so. Last month, a study of Australian households found this “neighbourhood effect” explained about 20% of solar panel installations.
“It’s all about keeping up appearances,” said Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a thinktank in the UK. She said her parents didn’t want to get double glazing till other houses on the street got it. Their neighbours had told them how much quieter it made living on the main road.
“For people who are not very environmentally minded, other ways into the conversation are quite useful,” she said.
But in towns such as Bautzen, Germany’s new approach may be too little, too late. For more than a year, the AfD has raged against a law that will eventually require all new heating systems to be able to run on at least 65% renewables. Bild, the the highest circulation daily newspaper in Germany, dubbed it the “heating hammer”. In Telegram chats and town hall meetings, critics decried the Greens for forcing households to make expensive renovations and taking away their freedom.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats, has promised to overturn the law if he becomes chancellor after federal elections in February. “We will regulate it so that people can make their own decisions about what they install,” he said on a talkshow. The uncertainty over the future of subsidies may have contributed to a surge in heat pump sales in recent weeks.
Heat pumps are more expensive than gas-burning boilers, but in most countries are cheaper to run, even before counting the costs that society pays for fossil fuel pollution. Germany subsidises 30-70% of the cost of a new heat pump and experts say the device could pay for itself in a number of years – though their calculations ignore the opportunity cost of investing the money or putting it in a savings account.
There are also barriers such as the “faff factor”, said Ralston – the effort of stripping out pipes and radiators, particularly if a boiler breaks unexpectedly the middle of winter.
At the same time, growing concerns about energy security could help sell heat pumps as the “patriotic” choice for homeowners who value locally sourced power. The technology reduces reliance on foreign fuels and can shield consumers from price shocks in volatile global gas markets. An analysis from the ECIU last month found a British heat pump would use six times less imported energy than a gas boiler in 2030 if the renewables rollout continues to accelerate.
“Heat pumps have huge energy security benefits because they reduce the amount we have to import,” said Ralston. “If you want to run something off British [or German] energy, it’s going be electricity, not gas.”
