---
title: "Heat pumps and the retrofit gap (research idea)"
description: "Heat pumps appear on 12 recent papers, energy retrofits on 7 and building energy efficiency on 10, almost all in the economics journals. Heating is the hardest part of home decarbonization, and subsidies have had uneven results. Who installs, do the energy savings match the models, and why do many households not switch?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-pumps-and-retrofits
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-pumps-and-retrofits.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Heat pumps and the retrofit gap (research idea): Heat pumps appear on 12 recent papers, energy retrofits on 7 and building energy efficiency on 10, almost all in the economics journals."
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "energy", "households"]
keywords: ["heat pumps", "energy retrofit", "building energy efficiency"]
---

# Heat pumps and the retrofit gap

Heat pumps appear on 12 recent papers, energy retrofits on 7 and building energy efficiency on 10, almost all in the economics journals. Heating is the hardest part of home decarbonization, and subsidies have had uneven results. Who installs, do the energy savings match the models, and why do many households not switch?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 44 papers carry a heat-pump, building-electrification, residential-heating or energy-retrofit keyword (38 in economics journals): "heat pumps" on 12, "building energy efficiency" on 10, "energy retrofit" on 7. The quarter to September 2026 had 11 such papers against about 10 per quarter earlier, with no sign of a surge despite large new subsidy programmes.

## Questions

- Do measured energy savings after retrofits and heat pump installations match the engineering estimates, and where do they fall short?
- Which households take up subsidies, and do rebates reach renters and low-income owners?
- When electricity is taxed more heavily than gas, as in many European countries, do heat pumps save money for the household at all?

## Data that could help

Smart meter data before and after installation, subsidy programme records, housing stock surveys and energy prices.

## Next step

Match subsidy recipients' smart meter readings before and after heat pump installation and compare realized savings with the projected ones.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| heat pumps | 0 | – | 0, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, 3, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 3, 0, 2, 4, 2, 0, 3, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 0 | 45 |
| energy retrofit | 0 | – | 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0 | 18 |
| building energy efficiency | 2 | #1303 | 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2 | 17 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Heat pumps and the retrofit gap. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-pumps-and-retrofits

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-heat-pumps-and-retrofits,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Heat pumps and the retrofit gap},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-pumps-and-retrofits}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).