What is happening in other countries with ground source heat pumps?
Not as much as many people think! In the EU, heat pumps have a share of less than 0.3% of the entire heating appliance market. Even in countries like Sweden, where as many as 40,000 per year are sold, heat pumps are astronomically expensive compared to a mains gas boiler – and must be installed by a specialist installer. The reason that they are so successful in Sweden has little to do with the design or expertise of native heat pump manufacturers – and everything to do with the lack or oil, gas, coal, and even electricity. There is no large-scale manufacturing of ground source heat pumps anywhere except North America – and 80% of those are designed for cooling, not heating. In 2004, around 70,000 heat pumps were sold in the EU. In the UK during this period, there were more than 1,000,000 boilers sold, of which more than 100,000 were oil fired. So, the entire EU heat pump market is dwarfed just by oil boilers in the UK. 60,000 of these 70,000 heat pumps have a British made compressor.
