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Find out more Actionable insight to support UK climate change goals
Overview: Actionable insight to support UK climate change goals
How Nesta built a segmentation framework to identify and engage future heat pump adopters
To meet the UK’s climate goals, around 3 million homes must switch to low-carbon heating by 2030 – a twelvefold increase from current adoption rates.
Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good, is driving this shift by helping energy, tech, and finance sectors better engage future adopters. But to do that effectively, Nesta need to pinpoint who’s ready to adopt and what’s holding others back.
Challenge overview
While only around 360,000 homes are currently heated by heat pumps, they are a proven low-carbon technology. They are three times more efficient than a gas boiler, work in the coldest UK temperatures, and use electricity, which can be generated from renewable resources. To meet climate change targets we need to be installing 450,000 heat pumps per year by 2030.
We are moving into a phase of early adoption of this technology. The innovators have tested it, but heat pumps are not yet the norm.
View Nesta Profile
Company Bio:
Nesta is the UK’s innovation agency for social good. They design, test and scale new solutions to society’s biggest problems, changing millions of lives for the better.
Nesta conducts experiments with public and private organisations, builds and invests in early-stage ventures, and shapes policy.
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|---|---|
| Mission 1: | Give every child a fair start |
| Mission 2: | Help people live healthy lives |
| Mission 3: | Create a sustainable future |
Working with Experian gave us access to deep segmentation expertise and layered data insights that were critical to understanding heat pump adoption. The team felt like an extension of ours - collaborative, flexible, and focused on finding the right solution. The result is a robust framework with actionable insights we can build on for future work.
Solution overview
Nesta partnered with Experian to build an actionable segmentation framework that helps identify and engage future heat pump adopters.
The segmentation drew on Experian’s geodemographic Mosaic segmentation, covering 30M UK households, as well as attitudinal survey data, via YouGov, distilling insights from 7,000 respondents (awareness, appeal, affordability, barriers). Installation data from the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (location, property type, uptake trends) was also drawn upon.
By combining policy expertise with rich consumer data and insights, the team identified eight distinct segments of future adopters, each with unique motivations, barriers, and behaviours. The segmentation supports Nesta’s goal of predicting future adoption trends and ensuring that information and services evolve with changing consumer profiles.
By understanding which segments are most likely to adopt heat pumps next, Nesta can guide training and capacity-building for installers and help manufacturers and suppliers forecast demand and plan accordingly.
For more information on the segments, visit the Nesta site.
The benefits included:
Insights grounded in reality: Built on actual adoption and attitudes, segments reveal who’s most likely to adopt and what’s holding them back.
Supports targeted messaging: Informing marketing and education campaigns as each group has different motivations from cost savings through to sustainability.
Cross-sector program design: Insights are being leveraged to support planning across energy, finance, and tech sectors.
Consistent framework: Segmentation lays the foundation for future research and projects to accelerate heat-pump adoption.
Nesta started by identifying who’s most likely to adopt heat pumps - and why. Now, the focus shifts to testing what works, refining engagement, and scaling impact through partnerships.
See how Mosaic works as a powerful segmentation framework
Results
- Segments reveal who’s most likely to adopt and what’s holding them back
- Insights are being leveraged to support planning across energy, finance, and tech sectors
- Segmentation lays the foundation for future research and projects to accelerate heat-pump adoption
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