The BBC presenter Evan Davis has been told he can no longer host a podcast about heat pumps due to the corporation’s concerns that discussing the technology risks “treading on areas of public controversy”.
The presenter of BBC Radio 4’s PM programme had hosted 20 episodes of the Happy Heat Pump Podcast, which launched in 2024. It has covered issues around installing the technology, the cost, noise levels and the alternatives for people replacing their gas boilers.
However, despite initially being given approval to go ahead with the non-BBC project, bosses told Davis the podcast risked exposing him to accusations of political bias.
“As the series has gone on – in fact as the world has progressed over the last few months – they have become concerned that anything like this trying to inform people about heat pumps can be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as somehow treading on areas of public controversy,” he told followers of the podcast’s YouTube channel.
“I take their shilling, they dictate the rules. They have to try and keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy, and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial, so they’ve asked me not to be involved.”
The widespread installation of heat pumps is seen as necessary to achieve the government’s target of hitting net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Last month, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, dropped her party’s support for the target. Davis said he believed the decision to stop him appearing on the podcast had been taken because of a link between heat pumps and the net zero target.
Bean Beanland, a director at the Heat Pump Federation and Davis’s co-presenter on the podcast, described the decision as “quite extraordinary”. Douglas Parr, Greenpeace UK’s policy director, said: “As an impartial broadcaster, the BBC should not be pandering to attempts from the right to turn the world’s most efficient home heating system into a culture war issue. What’s next – cancelling Gardeners’ World because of Monty Don’s support for peat-free compost?”
Davis said he received “no remuneration at all” for the podcast and had personally paid its small costs for music, dissemination and microphone equipment. He said there was no link with the HPF, other than the fact it employed his co-host.
However, he defended the broadcaster. “While it’s easy to be infuriated by the BBC and its caution on things like this – and of course, I do disagree with it in this case – I’ve never had the burden of actually having to run the BBC and make a hundred decisions a day, while people from all sides shout incessantly at me,” he said.
“I’m obviously free to leave if I don’t like the restrictions that come with working here, but I choose not to because it is a great institution, the PM programme is in excellent shape, and they pay me handsomely.”
The BBC has received criticism over its handling of environmental issues. In 2018, the broadcaster said it would stop “both-sidesing” the climate crisis, admitting that it got some of its coverage “wrong” by setting up debates with those who deny climate science.
However, more recently, the broadcaster has given a platform to some who call for reduced action on the climate breakdown. Producers also accused the BBC of shelving a 2023 political programme by Sir David Attenborough that linked the UK’s biodiversity loss to the climate crisis. Insiders said this was because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press.
BBC guidelines state employees should not compromise the impartiality of the corporation in their outside work. A source said while the BBC is clear that climate change is happening, responses to it are a matter of public policy. They added that Davis’s podcast only explored and promoted one possible solution.
The BBC has previously come under pressure over the external projects of its presenters. Last year, the broadcaster Clive Myrie apologised for failing to declare at least £145,000 earned from external events and said he would stop doing them for the “foreseeable future”.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC editorial guidelines are clear that anyone working for the BBC who does an external public speaking or writing engagement should not compromise the impartiality or integrity of the BBC or its content, or suggest that any part of the BBC endorses a third-party organisation, product, service or campaign.”
