My landlord refuses to install a heat pump and says gas is still fine. I live in Belgium and honestly I don't get why it would be worse than electricity. What's changed in the debate over the last few years?
Natural gas emits CO2 when it burns, plain and simple, so it's directly polluting. But the real thing that changed is that Belgium's electricity comes more and more from nuclear and renewables now, whereas before it was mostly coal and gas. So nowadays a heat pump is way greener than it was ten years ago. There's also the methane leaks in the gas distribution network that are a problem - methane is an insane greenhouse gas in the short term. Honestly your landlord can say whatever he wants, but ecologically that argument doesn't really hold up anymore 😕
You're right that gas seems logical when you only look at combustion, but the thing is even if Belgian electricity were nothing but coal (which it isn't), a heat pump would still be more efficient than gas heating - a heat pump uses less energy to produce the same heat 🔥 Plus, add to that your gas bill climbing because of geopolitical instability, whereas a heat pump is tied to electricity which keeps getting more stable and decarbonized over time. Your landlord might just be looking at upfront costs, but over 10-15 years it's a very different calculation.
Your landlord's overlooking a major detail: natural gas is methane that leaks everywhere throughout the supply chain, way before it even gets to your boiler. Unburned methane leaks have a massive climate impact in the short term, like 80 times more powerful than CO2 over 20 years. So even if your boiler burns cleanly, the entire network feeding it is already losing gas. It's not just the combustion that's the problem, it's the reality of the whole system.
In Belgium specifically, the electricity mix has really improved over the past ten years thanks to nuclear and wind power, so an electric heat pump today is way less polluting than it used to be. But there's also something people don't mention very often: a heat pump even with moderately dirty electricity is still more efficient than a gas boiler because it just moves heat around instead of generating it through combustion. Even 1 kWh of electricity produces more useful heat in your home than 1 kWh from burning gas.
For your landlord, the real reason he's refusing is the upfront cost, not efficiency. That's honest of him, but he needs to stop pretending it's an ecological choice.
The difference isn't really that gas got worse, but that electricity in Belgium has genuinely improved. Like others said, you've got more nuclear and renewables in the mix now. But there's one thing people often forget: even with an ultra-efficient gas boiler, you lose all the heat from the combustion itself. A heat pump, it just "moves" heat that already exists outside, so it uses way less energy for the same result.
And then there's the methane leaks we mentioned - that's really not negligible. Gas that escapes before it even gets to your place, that matters a lot for greenhouse gas. It's leaks in the pipes, factories, during transport... it can represent 3-4% of the gas extracted depending on the region, and unburned methane is like 80 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years.
Your landlord just looks at the moment the gas burns in your home, but the whole chain counts. In Belgium specifically, with your electricity improving, the heat pump becomes really way more worthwhile than before. It's not a question of ideology, it's just that the numbers changed.
One thing nobody really brought up: even if your Belgian electricity came entirely from coal (which is clearly not the case), a heat pump would still be more efficient than a gas boiler because it converts energy way better. You've got nuclear and wind power, so you're honestly in some of the best possible conditions!
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