Hello and many thanks for the kind words.

"piffle" is nonsense; the UK prime minister always uses colourful language, as he is in essence a journalist who studied classics.

The UK has about 30 million homes, a large fraction of which use gas boilers, about 26 millions. Most of them could be replaced with heat pumps, in houses for example, in the order of 20 millions. Others in flats could be replaced with a connection to heat networks; the latter could be powered in various ways.

As for the majority, replacing a gas boiler with a new one costs something in the order of £2-4k. Replacing a gas boiler with a air source heat pump costs around £5-10k which is far above what normal households would be able to afford. There was talk about a £5k grant, but with a limited budget. For 20 million heat pumps this would cost the government 100 billion pounds spread over the next 8 years. How could this be financed I do not know. The UK government has set aside 450 million pounds for 3 years so far.

In a similar vein, installing 20 million heat pumps over 8 years would require quite some resources, materials, cooling agent, and installers to fit about 6850 heat pumps every day of the year.