Behavioural Insights Team receives £100,000 contract from Government as ministers aim to deliver 300,000 extra home upgrades this year
A net-zero “nudge unit” accused of using scare tactics during the Covid pandemic will encourage the public to take up heat pumps.
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) has received a £100,000 contract from the Government as ministers aim to deliver an extra 300,000 home upgrades this year.
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, plans to scrap noise restrictions on heat pumps and lift the limit on their size in a push to expand their use.
The team was launched in 2010 under Lord Cameron’s administration in an effort to design policy interventions informed by human behaviour and has widely been viewed as a success in Whitehall.
However, Simon Ruda, a behavioural scientist who co-founded the unit, suggested in 2022 that scare tactics had been misused during Covid lockdowns to ensure the public complied with the rules.
While he defended behavioural science for driving improvements in policy, Mr Ruda said he was concerned the “level of fear willingly conveyed on the public” was the “most egregious and far-reaching mistake” of the coronavirus response.
The BIT’s work during the pandemic included an online experiment conducted in March 2020, the month of the first lockdown, to test which public health messages the public would remember.
Now the unit is expected to conduct similar research on heat pumps after being tasked with combatting what the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) calls “misinformation”.
Toby Park, the head of climate, energy and sustainability at BIT, claimed too many “myths” exist around the technology and that negative perceptions were a “barrier” to expanding their use.
Mr Park told The Guardian: “Heat pumps are a very efficient low-carbon system for keeping our homes warm but negative perceptions remain a barrier to their widespread adoption.
