We wanted to understand whether the potential introduction of hydrogen boilers could affect the uptake of low carbon heating options, such as heat pumps, ultimately delaying actions towards decarbonising homes.

We used Predictiv, the Behavioural Insights Team’s (BIT’s) online experiment platform, to run an online experiment with a sample of 5,025 homeowners who currently use a gas boiler in the UK. We designed an experiment that aimed to assess whether offering the option of a hydrogen boiler would change the likelihood that participants selected a heat pump, relative to those that were presented with a natural gas boiler. We also asked questions about views on the use of hydrogen for home heating.

Our findings

• We didn’t find a significant difference in the likelihood of choosing a heat pump in our stated preference task between any of the treatment groups and the control group.
• When we asked about why participants made the decision to choose a boiler rather than a heat pump, the higher running cost and installation costs for heat pumps were the top ranked factors.
• Overall, our findings suggest that cost remains the most important factor when replacing a gas boiler. This may be particularly the case when consumers are choosing between options that they don’t know much about, such as heat pumps versus hydrogen boilers.
• Although we didn’t find evidence that offering the option of hydrogen boilers instead of gas boilers affected the likelihood that participants selected a heat pump, a limitation of our research is that participant responses may not have reflected those that would occur in real life.