---
title: "Research Snippet #6 - Heat Pumps, Spark Gaps and The Invisible Hand"
description: Article explaining how UK consumers intuit the Spark Gap and vote with their feet by preferring to replace gas boilers with gas boilers.
image: https://www.electrifyresearch.co.uk/hubfs/image-png-4.png
---
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# Research Snippet #6 - Heat Pumps, Spark Gaps and The Invisible Hand
[By - Ben Marks,](https://www.electrifyresearch.co.uk/blog/author/ben-marks) Feb 18, 2025
Why is the UK an outlier in home heating? While other countries have embraced a mix of technologies - heat pumps, district heating and resistance heating - the UK remains overwhelmingly dependent on gas. In our [first Heat Pump Snippet](https://www.electrifyresearch.co.uk/blog/beyond-carbon-why-consumers-hesitate-on-heat-pumps)in this series, we explored how carbon concerns alone aren’t enough to drive rapid change to heat pumps. Cost, trust, and practicality matter just as much. Our [second Heat Pump Snippet](https://www.electrifyresearch.co.uk/blog/if-you-know-you-know-how-heat-pump-familiarity-impacts-purchase-intent) showed how familiarity with heat pumps strongly influenced adoption. Now in this latest Snippet, we dig deeper into price signals and how they drive the invisible hand that steers consumer choices and we explore the central policy implication of this: the need to address the UK's *Spark Gap*.
***Source: Homeowner Electrification Tracker Survey (HETS) 2025 by Electrify Research***
Our Homeowners Electrification Tracker Study (HETS) highlights just how unbalanced the UK's home energy scene is. We ask homeowners what type of heating system they have an 82% report having gas boilers. This compares to just 44% in Germany. The contrast is even sharper in France and the U.S., where a more diverse energy mix has evolved.
But HETS doesn’t just document the status quo. It also reveals intent. And the data suggests the UK is likely to remain behind its peers. Among UK owner-occupiers with gas boilers planning to change their heating system in the next three years, 51% still intend to choose gas, compared to just 23% in France and 19% in Germany. And when asked (unpromoted) to name the key drawbacks of heat pumps, 55% of UK homeowners say "cost and value" while just 38% say the same in France. While other nations accelerate their shift to low-carbon heating, the UK risks lagging further behind.
***Source: Homeowner Electrification Tracker Survey (HETS) 2025 by Electrify Research***
**Consumers respond to price signals even when they don’t realize it**
Why are British homeowners so reluctant to switch away from gas? HETS reveals a fundamental reason: consumers respond to price signals, even when they aren’t consciously aware of it (the "Invisible Hand"). As shown in the chart below, in UK, electricity is four times the price of gas per kilowatt-hour. This is largely because policymakers chose to levy the ‘pump priming’ costs of building the first wind farms, upgrading the grid, and other net zero policies onto electricity bills rather than absorb them into general taxation or levy them on gas bills. That was a political choice that has now led to the situation where heat pumps, although often four times more efficient than gas boilers, have their efficiency advantage largely wiped out by the UK’s high electricity to gas price ratio: the Spark Gap.
This isn’t just an economic quirk, it’s a very British problem. Our Spark Gap is the widest in Europe. In France, where electricity is half the price of the UK, the financial case for heat pumps is far clearer and French homeowners vote with their feet: 52% of gas boiler owners in France will consider heat pumps next compared to just 28% in the UK. The French government absorbs more of its net zero transition costs through taxation rather than placing them on household electricity bills, which helps drive heat pump adoption. Germany, by contrast, has historically had some of Europe’s highest electricity prices and as a result German homeowners, like their British counterparts, are far less likely to cite financial benefits as a reason to install a heat pump.
*Source: The Price Cap and the Spark Gap, Kensa, 2023*
**The Missing Piece in the Policy Debate**
Too often, discussions about decarbonizing home heating focus on technology, infrastructure, and regulation. But HETS underscores the importance of the consumer perspective, especially the invisible hand of price signals. Households don’t need to read government policy briefings to make decisions; they simply intuit the financial incentives in front of them. Right now, those incentives overwhelmingly favour gas.
To break the UK’s gas addiction, policymakers must rethink how they structure energy costs. Some possible solutions include shifting levies away from electricity, targeted tariff reductions for heat pump users, or a broader rebalancing of energy pricing. Each approach has trade-offs, but one thing is clear: as long as gas remains artificially cheap and electricity disproportionately expensive, heat pumps will remain a hard sell, and the UK will fall further behind its peers.
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- [Research Snippet #6 - Heat Pumps, Spark Gaps and The Invisible Hand](https://www.electrifyresearch.co.uk/blog/heat-pump-snippet-3/4-heat-pumps-spark-gaps-and-the-invisible-hand)
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