Heat pumps The PR blitz to sell across Germany's stubborn political divide

A few dozen people had gathered on the dancefloor of the nightclub in eastern Germany when Stefan Vetter took to the stage, his face chequered by neon lights that bounced off spinning disco balls, and flicked through PowerPoint slides of homeowners and their heaters. "We know that oil and gas are not getting cheaper in future," he said. The audience of mostly retired men nodded slowly along.

- Ajit Niranjan

Versions of this unusual scene played out in towns and cities across Germany last month in a week-long PR blitz to promote heat pumps – a clean alternative to gas-burning boilers. But rather than lecture citizens about climate or carbon, Vetter, an adviser at the Saxon energy agency, talked up the money they could save.

The German energy agency hopes that a focus on cheap bills and attractive subsidies will widen the heat pump's appeal beyond climate-conscious customers. It is a strategy being tested to the limit in far-right strongholds such as Bautzen, where the climate-sceptic Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) won a third of the vote in September elections, and other regions where the Greens have become a political punching bag after pushing through an unpopular heating law last year.

"The heat pump was promoted in the media in a very wrong way," said Luca Nozon from Energy Saxony, one of the event's organisers, who had little success inviting people to attend the session when he walked around Bautzen that morning.