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How do youwRukcopYSUVuk wRYour browser does not support the element. know if someone is vegan? They will tell you, runs the old joke. How do you know if someone owns a heat pump? They will invite you into their home to admire the performance of a 14k Midea 32 stuffed under the stairs behind some tasteful louvre shutters.The “Visit A Heat Pump” scheme run by Nesta, an innovation charity, is a curio of Britain’s net-zero transition. Each weekend hundreds of volunteers welcome visitors into their homes to discuss how to book a council-mandated sound survey, the merits and demerits of a flow temperature of 55°C versus 45°C, and the joys of a triple-panel radiator. For someone in south London, the hosts on offer are David, Paul, Edward, Nick, Naresh, Mario, Stephen, Jerry, Bernie, Nicholas, Phil, Priyesh, Roy, Paul and Steph (who is also, incidentally, a man). The trend is obvious: the Net-Zero Dads are on the march.Attitudes to climate change shift with sex. In general, men care less about climate change than women do. , Nigel Farage’s climate-sceptic party, is disproportionately male. This worries climate wonks, who therefore cook up schemes designed to win men round. Call it “blokewashing”: when climate activists try to make their aims look manly. The result is advertisements in which Jimmy Bullard, a former footballer with a high level of bloke-per-inch, is paid to issue warnings that extreme-weather events could ruin the football season.Climate wonks should worry less. Although middle-aged men might care a bit less about the problem, they are often much keener on the solution. When it comes to adopting green measures, whether it be installing a heat pump, or running the tumble dryer at 4am, it is middle-aged men who lead the way. The supposed villains of the climate transition are the heroes. The hour of the Net-Zero Dad has come.Heat pumps are only the most prominent example. Middle-aged men with kids are among the keenest on installing a heat pump, according to More In Common, a pollster. Britain is behind in its plan to replace gas boilers with heat pumps, which run on (in theory soon-to-be almost entirely green) electricity. It hopes to have 600,000 installed each year by 2028. In 2024 it managed a sixth of that figure. Early evangelists—the Nicks, Phils and Pauls willing to spend their weekends showing strangers their airing cupboards—are vital to spread the gospel.At this stage in the adoption cycle, there is much still to be debated. A thriving heat-pump community exists, with message boards filled with men comparing their “coefficient of performance” (), the ratio of how much energy a heat pump takes in and spits out. It is a jargon-filled world, with criticism for those who hubristically pursue a higher coefficient even if it is not the most cost-efficient thing to do. (Not even heat pumps can escape the fragility of the male ego.) Octopus Energy, now , has an invite-only private forum in which thousands swap technical ideas. Naturally, it is quite male.Shifting to a new model of supplying energy requires experiments, which need guinea pigs. Net-Zero Dads offer themselves. During “saving sessions”, when customers are paid to use less energy, Steves, Peters and Stuarts post pictures of themselves sitting in the dark, or watching “Hollyoaks” on an iPad by candlelight. Octopus’s agile tariff allows customers to pay the wholesale price, which updates every half hour. The reward: slightly lower energy costs. The risk: a big bill if a tumble-dryer session collides with peak pricing. But what is life without a little risk? “I’m surfing the electricity price,” says one Net-Zero Dad, thrilled.Some technologies are beyond proof of concept, thanks to Net-Zero Dads. Electric vehicles, for instance, now make up a fifth of new-car sales. Twice as many men as women drive them, perhaps because they accelerate so exhilaratingly fast. Middle-aged men with children under 18 are particularly keen, points out More In Common. The Tesla Model was the most popular model in Britain in 2024. For all that it looks like a bog-standard -cross, it can do 0 to 60mph in 3.5 seconds—as speedy as an Aston Martin Vantage. A mid-life-crisis-mobile is necessary to save the planet.Preparing for the climate transition can be only an older person’s game. The young might have more motivation. The old have the means. An electric car is not cheap. Only those who own their home are able to put solar panels on the roof, a giant heat pump on the patio or a charging point in the garage. Renters are reliant on their landlords going green. You need a chunk of money saved up to afford a heat pump, even with generous subsidies of £7,500 ($9,300) per installation. The green transition relies heavily on the bank of mum and Net-Zero Dad.Net-zero scepticism is forever the next front in British politics. A shift towards it did little for Rishi Sunak, who steered the Conservatives to a historically bad election result. The remaining doubters have sorted themselves neatly into the Reform fold. When politicians discuss these doubters, they invariably picture a bloke of a certain age. Yet for every middle-aged man gleefully highlighting another , a German word for when there is no sun or wind for weeks, and the folly of net zero, there is a Net-Zero Dad proudly showing strangers a whirring heat pump.And so in south London, phones are whipped out as the 14k Midea 32 is fired up. An onlooker holds his up for the magic moment: a background of two young children is swept away and replaced with a decibel-meter app (you don’t already have one?) to measure the noise. At 43 decibels, or the murmur of a quiet library, and much less than the flight going overhead, it is enough to allay any final concern. Another Net-Zero Dad is born.
