Pumps and bumps on the road to low carbon heating

To reach net zero, we’re being expected to switch from gas boilers to heat pumps but, with the lowest installation rates in Europe, many consumers in the UK appear wary. Trust is surfacing as a key issue. Can the sciences of mind and brain help us understand what trust is and how it forms? What will help us trust in novel and greener types of heating technology?

More info on mindbrainplanet.com

Chapters

• 1:03 Do people know what a heat pump is and how it works??
• 3:55 Heated debate over heating systems: Extracts from social media
• 4:48 Kat Runnalls (customers manager and psychologist) explains why changing our heating can makes us anxious
• 9:45 PHJ visits Joe who has a heat pump - and discuss trust
• 14:14 Trust in the brain
• 16:00 Kat on fostering trust in customers
• 17:17 How "seals of approval" and customer reviews impact on our brain's trust circuitry
• 18:17 Celine reflects on her experience of heat pump installation
• 22:54 Positive and negative effects of compensation on our trust

Transcript

Pumps and Bumps on the road to low carbon heating – Transcript

In this podcast, we’re going to be exploring why more people in the UK aren’t fitting heat pumps - but we’re not going to be talking about kilowatts, efficiencies or even costs – this is going to be about feelings, emotions and intuitions. We’re going to be focusing on that sense of uncertainty – the trepidation we sometimes experience when we invest in something new – such as technology that’s intended to help us address climate change – whether it's an electric car, an e-bike or a novel type of heating system. What goes on inside our minds and brains that helps us overcome our sense of uncertainty and commit? But to start with….hands up who knows what a heat pump is?

PHJ: So I just wanted to ask do you know what that is?

Passer by 1: Which bit of that? Oh that’s air-conditioning. Is it?

Passerby 2: Is it a ground source heat pump?

PHJ: That’s actually an air-source heat pump. But you’re very close – you can still have the prize.

PHJ: So I just wanted to ask if you knew what that was?

Passerby 3: I do. Is it…is it…Our friend’s got one in her garden – to help with the electricity. That’s what she uses now. I just can’t think what it’s called.

PHJ: Have you ever seen one of these before?

Passerby 4: On Kirsty and Phil

PHJ: Have you any idea how it operates?

Passerby 4: No – I just know it’s better for the environment.

PHJ: So I just wanted to ask if you knew what one of these is?

Passerby 5: Is that er…ah no – is it air conditioning?

Passerby 6: Not a clue either to be honest.

PHJ: It’s a heat pump – a low carbon way of heating the home. Have you any idea how they work?

Passe by 6: A heat pump? Is that …so…on the roof….the sun heats it up…no I don’t know what that is….I’m thinking of something else aren’t I …..yeah I’ve no idea…

PHJ: I’m just wondering if you could tell me what one of these is?

Passerby 7: Presumably a heat exchanger thingy.

PHJ: Yes it’s a heat pump.

Passerby 7: yes – taking the warmth out of the air to heat your house.

PHJ: Have you ever thought about fitting one?

Passerby 7: No I’ve got gas central heating which works adequately and the thought that I might have to put one in one day I would consider it but not at the moment. 

So yes - a heat pump takes in heat from the air or the ground outside and pumps it into your home. An air-source heat pump looks like a box with a fan in it that sits outside your house – just want to have a look at one then just have a look at the blog that accompanies this podcast. 

Our government’s been offering us grants to encourage us to start fitting heat pumps – as we head towards a ban on selling gas boilers in 10 years time - but, compared with other countries in Europe, we’re at the bottom of the heat pump installation league. We’re supposed to be fitting 600,000 in UK homes every year by 2028 to reach our netzero targets but at the moment we’re installing less than one tenth of that figure.

And when you look on line – well….the arguments are raging:

“The problem is utter numpties do a straight swap with a gas boiler without researching them, then cry foul when their drafty uninsulated house stays cold”

“Just forget it. It's a stupid 'eco' fad that makes the tree-huggers all warm and fuzzy but like everything 'eco' it is complete garbage and doesn't work”

“People in the UK are being misled by the telegraph and other publications and are spreading stupid mistruths like this on this thread! 

“I wouldn't even consider upgrading until a fair percentage of neighbours with similar houses had bitten the bullet and gone through a winter or two with them - Why be a canary?”

We cannot continue to heat our homes on dinosaur juice and wood, people!”            

To understand why we’re sounding so anxious about heat pumps, I spoke to someone who’s been working in heat pump sales and applying their training in psychology to better understand her customers: 

Kat: My name is Kat Reynolds and I've spent the last three years working in customer relations looking at ground source heat pumps.

PHJ:So is there, is there something deeper here? Because I mean, one of the reasons why I, you know, I it would be really, it's really interesting to talk to you, Kat, is that you actually have a, a background in psychology, don't you?

Kat: I do, yes. So I am a psychology graduate and actually going forward my next, the next part of my journey in my career is a PhD in researching adoptions to the barriers of heat pumps, specifically in vulnerable consumers, because I recognize that there is a lot more than the, the kind of the technical side of things that cause these barriers. One of the biggest barriers and, and one of the big anxiety biggest causes of anxiety is actually how people heat their homes. I, I think that when we talk about heat, people always think about hot you know, and think about temperature as just hot and cold, but actually we think we don't always consider actually what that is for an individual person. And heating a home and heating an individual person are really intrinsic and really important. Now for anybody who's worked in kind of education or social work or healthcare, we've all seen this really kind of bright, colorful pyramid called Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. It's kind of something that's drummed into you from a very early stage in your career if you've worked in those sectors. And Maslow's hierarchy of needs says that one of the most basic physiological needs that anybody needs to achieve to sort of sustain what we call homeostasis, basic, basic needs in our body is temperature, warmth. So I think when we're going into people's homes and we're saying, right, we wanna take away your gas boiler, or we wanna take away your night storage heaters, and we want to put in a, a heat pump, we are effectively changing the way an individual person heats their home and therefore their body. So we are changing something very physiological for them, and that causes a great amount of anxiety for individuals. And I think that we forget that as heat pump technologists and as heating engineers that we forget that within these homes, within the, within these houses, they are, they are homes and they are the homes of people. And those people have these very basic needs to heat themselves to an element of thermal comfort. You know, the thermal comfort is very, very important because if you can't do that, then you can't meet all the other needs that you need to have to survive. 

PHJ: When, when you put it like that, it sounds so primal and, and visceral. It's this very basic thing that you are reaching into somebody's home and actually changing something, which they've got used to, which provides comfort. But also without that heating, there's not much that we can do is there, we can't really function. I mean, we've all, well, many of us have had experiences where the heating's broken down at work and we've just been sent home <laugh> because you can literally cannot function. 

Kat: And that's one of the big questions that people asked me when I was working on heat pump projects, is, am I going to be warm enough? They were very fearful of being cold, and the answer is always, yes, you are going to be warm enough. But the way that heat pumps deliver thermal comfort and heat is very different to how gas boilers, oil boilers and night storage heaters deliver heat because it's an ambient temperature rather than a burst of hot you know, high, high temperature heat. Mm. And so it's a, it's about managing individuals expectations about how, how that heat is delivered to them. So it, it's, it's completely understandable when you take it back to that, as you say, very primal basic need. It's, it's, it's more understandable to, to realize why people would experience those anxieties. And I think we have to remember that.

PHJ: As it happens, I’m also one of those many UK home owners who don’t know much about heat pumps but would like to know more – so I was interested when Kat told me how I could visit a heat pump in my local area…. 

Kat: “, we've got a great initiative in the UK where people can go and see a heat pump now. So Nesta for example, have a scheme where you can go and visit a heat pump, and there's also the Green Homes initiative as well where you can go and see heat pumps working in action in your, in your local communities. And I always encourage people to go and do that because then they can actually see these things up and running and talk to real, real people real people, believe it or not, who've got this working, and they can see what it looks like in other homes. And I think if you can say to people, go test, try, have a look, touch, feel the heat for yourself, then that instills trust in the customer as well.”

So to find out what a heat pump is and to imagine how I might feel heating my home with one I signed up to the visit-a-heat-pump scheme – and it wasn’t long before I got a message back from a local resident called Joe - inviting me round – so I jumped on my bike…

Joe: I'm Joe I'm a product designer. I'm 44 and I live in Bristol.

PHJ:  So what, what was the, what was the trickiest part do you think of the whole project? You know, from first thinking about doing it to sitting here now. Actually I must say I'm sitting in a warm house and it's a cold day, so it's, it's clearly working.

Joe: I think the trickiest thing is that it's a different layout, that it's not put the block, the box that was the boiler where the boiler was - it's not a like for like replacement. Because it’s a relatively complex thing, it has to be an onsite thing. You know, people come to your house they have a look around, they have to measure, they have to work out what your heat loss is and, and all the rest of it, which means you get to meet these people. Whereas if you did it online, it'd be very difficult to know, do you trust these people? So you have a long conversation with them and you very quickly get an impression of whether they are salespeople or engineers or, you know, what their vested interest, everybody has a vested interest. Are they here to just get the grant and go, or are they here to green up our heating and, and make a new industry? And, and of the three I spoke to, they were all good actually. But one was just gave me a little bit more confidence.

PHJ: Yeah. So that's interesting. I mean, what was it that made you feel you could trust that installer more than the other ones? 

Joe: I think maybe they were open to my suggestions or what I'd learned. You know, I'd asked them a question and rather than just go back to lead you to what they wanted to install in your house, it felt more like a negotiation of…I think that was it. It felt like a dialogue. And I think you got the impression that they were, they were designing it for the house, not just what they happened to have back at the office and, and wanted to sell you. that was a really nice experience. And actually the, the people who came and fitted it were very nice and, you know, it

PHJ: So when, when you say the people who came were nice. Yeah. Can I push you to, to say what you mean by nice?

Joe: I think not patronizing. I mean, you know, I think they were willing to explain it to the whole family and say, this is how it's done. They weren't just like, don't touch that. You know, you don't need to know what that is. You know 

PHJ: was there anything that the the people that you didn't employ do that looking back on it, that sort of tweaked your trust area a little bit, you know, and your antenna …

Joe: There was one company it was kind of very much like, we are gonna just do what we always do. We know how to install this stuff. So they were offering a rather technical, but a split system that involved running pipe work between the house and the thing which actually had refrigerant running in it, which means a large amount of refrigerant running around the system which obviously is prone to leaks because you've got lots more pipe work is, is more risk. But also those refrigerants are really not great for the environment. And so if you're installing it for the purposes of a, of a environmental benefit and then you fill up the pipes with something that's really damaging for the world, it seems a bit backwards. Whereas the pump we've got, I think if it leaked, it's the equivalent of driving three kilometers in your car, which, you know i, I can swallow and that's only if it's damaged. But for me it just felt like they weren't on the same page. It wasn't for environmental purposes. They were offering the service because there was a demand. They weren't emotionally invested in. The idea of heat pumps, I think was probably the, the company I ruled out for that reason.

PHJ: They didn't share your values

Joe: Exactly didn't share our values. 

So this is not just about weighing up costs and efficiencies – there’s this other stuff that Joe’s interested in too - the values of the vendor – whether they wanted to talk to his family. This about trust. 

We always experience some uncertainty when think about investing in something new – we have to weigh up the anticipated rewards against the risks – including the chance of betrayal. Trust has to form in order for us to bridge all this uncertainty and commit - so how does that happen in the brain?

We have two networks in our brains that are particularly helpful in building the trust that overcomes our uncertainty. One of these involves engaging our frontal cortex on the facts and figures and doing our research, exactly what is the best deal available – what will maximise anticipated rewards and minimise the hazards? But once you’ve got that far, another network gets involved, called the default mode network. This is about you – your Default Mode Network activates more when you think about yourself in the imaginary future – such as how you might get on with someone further down the line. Yes, this network helps you evaluate the trustworthiness of a relationship. If you’ve already gone down this sort of road before with someone and things have turned out ok, and you have a good relationship with them, then that will add to those anticipated rewards and it might even reduce activity in the default mode network. After all, you already have a good level of trust – you don’t need to suss them out. But with a new product like a heat pump, and especially with a new company, the Default Mode Network will be playing an important role. However good the deal, do you trust who is offering it – how will you be getting on with them further down the line? And research shows we’re more likely to trust someone if we think they listen to us and try to understand us.

Kat: Yeah, absolutely. Trust is huge. I mean, I could be, you know, the next “Dell Boy”, as I always say to them, I could just be another dodgy window salesman. …It's not about just selling a heat pump to somebody. It's about understanding actually what is that individual person's needs for thermal comfort? Is that heat pump going to work for that person's needs? Taking into account things like medical conditions and making sure that when you are adopting heat pumps, actually it is designed correctly for the individual person's homes. I think one of the difficulties that we've had with the uptake of and, and the adoption of heat pumps is that there has been a huge amount of negative social media around heat pumps, and that has caused a level of mistrust in consumers and customers. 

Kat: It's exactly like when you, if you were having a new gas boiler installed, one of the first things you would look for is the gas safe triangle. With heat pumps, you would look for MCS accreditation. That's, that's the first thing that I would say to look for. And then you would look for things like Trustpilot reviews or you would ask a neighbour who, who are, who installed your heat pump. But so yes. You, you know, that is another way of trusting people. I suppose one of the ways I got people to trust me in my in, in, in my heat pump installations and heat pump projects was talking to the individual about their needs. And I think, again, I think that's just really important.

MCS stands for Microgeneration Certification Scheme – it’s essentially one of those Seals of Approval you sometimes get on a product – so you know it’s met certain standards - and they really do help us to trust the product. When researchers in Spain compared the brain activities of consumers looking at different types of information online, they found Seals of Approval increased activity in the brain’s reward system – yes it’s that anticipation of reward - suggesting an immediate sense of trust even though they hadn’t yet had any dealings with the company. In contrast, customer reviews activated those networks for evaluating trustworthiness again - as if we’re asking “Can we trust the reviews that are telling us to trust the product?”  

Continuing on my tour of local heat pumps,  I visited Celine …..I asked how she’d felt, starting out on her journey to low carbon heating…..

Speaker 3 (01:16):

Hi, I'm Celine. I own a five bedroom house in Chepstow area and we met together today because I've installed an hit pump in, well I had an hit pump installed in my house last September.

PHJ: So Celine what made you want to install a heat pump in the first place?

Celine: I yend to always make improvement to my house – because it’s like an asset that you have and you don’t want it to depreciate over time. And I know that having a heat pump influences the EPC rating and in turn the EPC rating increases the value of your home – so installing a heat pump is basically working for the planet but also presderving my asset.  

PHJ: And an EPC rating is your Energy Performance Certificate – I think I’ve learnt that today so thank you. When you started this, did you have any concerns about how it might go and how did it, how did it feel sort of entering into this adventure of completely changing your heating system?

Celine: So we already knew someone close, my stepfather or my father-in-law in France who has a house in the country, an old house, very old house, and he's got a heat pump and everything is going smoothly. So that was one thing that sort of was reassuring. And also we moved to the uk seven to eight years ago and before we lived in the Alps and Alps tend to be very cold. We had an old house and people around us also had heat pumps. So I was not believing that, oh, heat pump is just for a country where there's no cold because I, I knew that was wrong. Okay, so my worry was not about the hit pump technology. I have, I absolutely trust it and I trust it's sufficient. My worry was more like you, when you do any work in your house, will the installer be good? Will they do what they plan to do? Will they be on time? Will they be hidden cost? Will they be I mean it's a, it's a massive investment. So will it be worth it in the end? How can I trust them? I don’t know any one of them.

PHJ: I dunno how much listeners know about installing a heat pump, but it's not actually always that straightforward. So what was that like? 

Celine: it was five days. During these five days we've had no hot water for three days. We had no heating, but it was September, so it was not an issue. But the engineers were working, so it was they were sometime two, sometime three. And they were working in one specific area at a time. So they were doing the pipe work in the kitchen maybe for a day, then they were moving upstairs to do some pipe work in another room for a day. So it was not everywhere at the same time. So you didn't feel like it was messy. It wasn't.

PHJ: And, and did you anticipate, were you actually expecting that, that sort of disruption?

Celine: I think it was less disruptive than I thought it would be. So the engineer himself told me I would be three days without water. But when I went back on the website where I actually signed off all the proposal, et cetera, they said that I, they, they would minimize the disruption to half a day without water. And obviously that was wrong. So I told the engineer and I think that was fed back to the website. So I think they've changed their presentation now.

PHJ: Would that have been a different experience if you had actually been, if you'd believed that it was gonna be half a day and then it had turned into three days?

Celine: I would have been disappointed because that means you have to make arrangements. So yeah, I, that would have probably changed my whole experience about having a heat pump installed. 

Because then, you know, today I hosted a visit with people wanting to know what it is, like having heat pump installed, et cetera, in, in a real house. And I think I was quite positive, but if I had a different experience during the installation process, maybe I wouldn't even have hosted the, the thing.

If the engineer hadn’t prepared Celine for a few days of disruption, she would have felt her trust had been violated and she might have complained. Trust can be rebuilt and financial compensation helps. But interestingly, not overcompensation. Scientists in Belgium allocated paid work unfairly to their participants while they were having their brains scanned, and then later offered to overcompensate with more money than their participants had actually lost out on. The effect was more activation in those brain regions for assessing trustworthiness –  in other words, it’s proportionate compensation that helps to rebuild our trust - overcompensation simply makes us more suspicious. 

Joe and Celine are early adopters – people who have that additional understanding, awareness and motivation to be in the vanguard of changes that we’ll all soon be facing.  And talking to them, and to Kat, has really emphasised to me how important trust is when it comes to stepping into the future – and how trust forms in both rational and  emotional, intuitive ways – something perhaps that the energy industry will have to think about more - as the rest of us move towards low carbon heating in our homes.