Air-source heat pump carbon footprints: HFC impacts and comparison to other heat sources

European governments see that heat pumps could reduce carbon emissions in space- and hot-water heating. EU’s Renewable Energy Directive designates heat pumps as renewable – eligible for various subsidies – if their carbon footprints are below an implied, average threshold. This threshold omits carbon generated by manufacture and emission of a heat-pump’s fluorocarbon refrigerant. It also omits the footprint of the heat pump’s hardware. To see if these omissions are significant, this study calculated carbon footprints of representative, residential heat pumps in the UK.