Reframing heat pump transitions: a care perspective

The decarbonisation of domestic heating is central to climate policy, with the heat pump positioned as a key technology for phasing out natural gas in Europe and the UK. While framed as an efficient and sustainable solution, heat pump adoption is met with challenges extending beyond technical and economic barriers, and adoption rates have fallen short of what is required to meet climate targets. By synthesising existing energy scholarship through a care-ethical lens, this article explores how the challenges of heat pump adoption can be better understood. Although interest in care is growing within energy research, it remains fragmented and undertheorised, lacking a consolidated framework or shared research agenda. This article furthers understandings of care in energy scholarship by demonstrating how dominant narratives of rational choice, efficiency and innovation obscure the affective, relational and material dimensions of care in sustainable heating, while identifying significant absences in the literature regarding neighbourhood practices, tenants, more-than-human actors and the intersectionally differentiated conditions under which the energy transition unfolds. However, this synthesis goes beyond theoretical contributions: by foregrounding care as both an analytical and practical orientation, it articulates ways towards more socially attuned and equitable low-carbon futures.

POLICY RELEVANCE

Although heat pumps play a central role in decarbonising domestic heating in Europe and the UK, their uptake remains slower than anticipated and required to meet climate targets. A care-centred framework explains this gap by moving beyond policy framings of adoption in terms of individual responsibility or motivation, financial incentives or appeals to techno-financial, implicitly masculine homeowner identities. Embedding care within policy design can help ensure that heat pump transitions are not only technically effective but socially equitable and responsive to the lived realities of diverse households. A care-centred perspective reveals that heat pump adoption and usage are fundamentally shaped by household care responsibilities, housing inequalities, emotional and sensory experiences and neighbourhood dynamics. Policy should therefore address the affectual, relational, infrastructural and socio-material dimensions of heating transitions, supporting collective arrangements, fair distribution of maintenance and care labour, and attention to diverse household vulnerabilities, routines and sensory experiences.