Heat pumps sit at the heart of Europe’s strategy to cut emissions and reduce dependence on imported gas. Under the EU’s REPowerEU plan, the bloc is targeting 60 million heat pumps by 2030. By the end of 2025, almost 30 million units were already installed — progress, but still only halfway to the goal.
Gerard and Laurent are joined by
Paul Kenny, Director General of the
European Heat Pump Association (EHPA), to unpack why adoption has surged in countries such as Japan, Scandinavia and parts of the US, while many European markets continue to lag.
After a strong year in 2022, European heat pump sales slowed in 2023 and 2024 amid high upfront costs, a shortage of qualified installers, weaker policy support and an unfavourable price relationship between gas and electricity. Paul explains why confidence is returning in 2025, with 1m heat pumps sold across 13 European countries in the first half of 2025, a 9% increase on 2024.
We also look beyond residential heating to the rapid rise of industrial heat pumps, which could become a major decarbonisation tool for sectors requiring heat below 200°C, including food processing and pharmaceuticals. The conversation explores how heat pumps can add flexibility to the power system, in some cases reducing the need for battery storage, and why data centre heat management is emerging as a key new application.
As the leading voice of Europe’s heat pump industry, EHPA is working to make heat pumps the preferred technology for sustainable heating and cooling — strengthening Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and energy security in the process.
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Finally, Gerard and Laurent are invited by
Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at Oxford university and an energy policy expert, for a live session at Oriel College in
Oxford on 25/2/26.
