Morning edition · Tuesday, 10 November 2026
Ordinary Ledger: 71% say heat pump, 80% say the price is the problem
A ZEW survey of 2,551 energy advisers and installers finds the technology is not what holds households back. The bill, the budget and the changing rules are.
If you are wondering what to put in the cellar when the old boiler gives up, the people who advise on it have a clear favourite. In a nationwide survey of 2,551 energy experts in 2026, the ZEW in Mannheim found they had recommended a heat pump in an average of 71% of cases in 20251. Among heating installers, heat pumps made up 57% of the systems they actually installed1. In a separate experiment with realistic advice scenarios, the heat pump was recommended in about two-thirds of cases1.
The interesting part is what the experts say stops people. Not the machine: only 4% name poor product quality as an obstacle. Instead, 80% cite high investment costs, 74% frequent changes to the legal framework and 72% customers’ lack of money1. Co-author Kathrine von Graevenitz says customers care above all about investment and long-run total costs and enough heating output (desk translation)1.
Your house decides more than your intentions. A lower energy need of 70 rather than 120 kilowatt-hours per square metre raised the probability of a heat-pump recommendation by 24.5 percentage points; a high need of 200 kilowatt-hours lowered it by 32.7 points; underfloor heating instead of radiators raised it by 19.8 points1. The age and income of the household and the year the building went up also mattered1. And advisers did not always agree: in comparable situations, they sometimes reached different recommendations, co-author Bettina Chlond notes1.
On prices, more than 90% of the experts expect natural gas to be dearer over the next five years, while more than half expect heat-pump electricity prices to stay the same or fall1. That is their expectation, not a guarantee, and it is worth hearing precisely because these are the people who see the invoices.
The ordinary lesson: before you ask “heat pump or not”, ask what your house uses per square metre, and get a second opinion if the first one arrives too quickly. Stable rules would help everyone; a second quote helps you today.
What to watch
- Whether the next changes to heating rules come with a long, fixed timetable; 74% of the experts name frequent rule changes as a barrier1.
A good boiler decision starts with the house, not the headline.
Sources
- Wärmepumpen werden favorisiert – aber Gebäudeeigenschaften ausschlaggebend — ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, 9 Nov 2026.
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