The Public Don’t Care About Installer Politics. They Care If Their House Is Warm.

I’m not a massive fan of bigots. Or polarised, binary debates.

Having grown up around the long shadow of Northern Ireland, and later witnessing the fragile compromise that became the Good Friday Agreement, I learned something early: societies move forward when people stop treating every disagreement as a blood sport.

The retrofit industry could probably use a little more of that instinct.

Because right now, parts of the UK heating debate resemble two tribes shouting across a barricade.

Heat pumps either “don’t work” or will supposedly save civilisation. Gas boilers are either relics or eternal. Installers are heroes or cowboys. Every failed install becomes proof the transition is broken. Every criticism becomes “greenlash.”

Reality is considerably messier than that.

Which is why I found myself interested in the story of Michael Tonner, now Operations Director at Scottish renewable installer Boxergy, but formerly the director of Matchless Energy, a rapidly growing renewables company that ultimately collapsed during the violent expansion phase of the post-energy-crisis heat pump market.

The easy version of this story would be heroism or blame.

The more useful version is to ask what happens when an immature market collides with ambition, grant dependency, labour shortages, scaling pressure and rapidly evolving standards.

As Michael put it:

“It was the Wild West, man. It was absolute carnage.”

That description will irritate some people in the sector. But speak privately to enough installers and a more complicated picture emerges.

Many companies were simultaneously trying to retrain gas engineers, understand refrigerant systems, navigate MCS paperwork, source unfamiliar components and scale operations at extraordinary speed.

At one point during our interview, Michael described installers arriving on-site only to discover critical parts had not been supplied.

“You’re all done the heat pump and it’s like: where’s the feet? Where’s the hoses? Nobody knew.”

That is not a criticism of heat pumps.

It is a description of an ecosystem still learning how to operate at scale.

And perhaps this is where some of the online debate loses perspective. The irony is that many of the best heat pump installers in Britain started as gas engineers.

This is not really a war between boilers and heat pumps.

It is a transition between generations of heating technology.

Consumers do not care whether their comfort comes from combustion or refrigeration cycles. They care whether the house is warm, whether the bills are manageable and whether somebody answers the phone if something breaks.

As Michael bluntly put it:

“The public don’t care about installer politics. They care if their house is warm.”

He is probably right.

No homeowner lies awake at night worrying about ideological battles between “proper” heat pump installers and boiler engineers. They want competent workmanship, predictable costs and confidence that the company installing the system will still exist in five years.

That confidence is growing because, despite the noise online, the market is clearly changing.

“People are realising this is something that’s here to stay.”

That may be uncomfortable for parts of the traditional heating sector. Not because gas engineers are stupid, or because boilers suddenly stopped working, but because markets evolve whether people emotionally approve of them or not.

Nobody serious believes gas disappears overnight. It will remain part of Britain’s heating mix for years.

But pretending the future contains only combustion heating increasingly looks less like realism and more like nostalgia.

Michael himself came from a gas background before pivoting into renewables during the energy crisis.

Within four years, Matchless Energy reportedly grew to around 40 staff and roughly £1.7 million turnover.

Then the pipeline collapsed.

“Pipeline gets pulled from under our feet overnight. Nobody’s surviving that.”

There is a temptation online to treat failed companies as morality plays. But the reality is often structurally more complicated than social media allows.

• Over dependence on grant funding.
• Cashflow delays.
• Labour shortages.
• Compliance burdens.
• Supply-chain volatility.

The lesson Michael draws now is not ideological at all. It is operational.

“Being in control of your own lead flow and not being dependent on government funding.”

That observation mirrors concerns increasingly voiced across the sector itself. Subsidy ecosystems can accelerate growth dramatically, but businesses built entirely around them become vulnerable if policy or contractor pipelines shift suddenly.

Yet perhaps the most revealing moment in the interview came right at the end.

After nearly two hours discussing chaos, collapse, recovery and the future of heating, Michael asked me something quietly revealing:

“Is this going to be positive?”

Honestly, I felt sad he had to ask.

Because if this had been a hatchet job, the process would have looked very different. There would have been allegations, due diligence requests, rights of reply and legal framing.

This interview was never about public execution.

It was about whether industries mature by endlessly cannibalising people who stumble, or whether they allow experienced operators to learn, adapt and rebuild.

Which is where Boxergy becomes important.

Michael is now part of a larger, structured business investing heavily into testing, R&D and operational systems. Less than a year after joining, he has already been promoted to Operations Director. Nobody promotes failure. We are craving experience. But that promotion...

That does not erase the past.

Nor should it.

But it does suggest that experienced people looked at the totality of the situation, the successes, the failures, the growth and the collapse -and concluded there was still capability worth investing in.

Perhaps that is what a maturing industry actually looks like.

Not endless boosterism.
Not endless cynicism.

Just skilled people, adapting imperfectly to a changing world, while trying to keep Britain warm.