Newly published, the EU Directive on the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources effectively recognises and turns the text on the potential of air and ground source heat pumps, as sources of renewable energy, into EU legislation.This means that under the new legislation, all EU member states should increase their share of renewable energy in final energy demand in an effort to boost the EU's total share to 20% by 2020.Both the European Heat Pump Association and the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment have commented how everyone will benefit from the new Directive. Alongside windmills and PV solar panels, the householder consumer is encouraged to use state of the art renewable technologies for heating and cooling at lowest possible costs, thereby increasing local demand for renewable technologies to reach individual targets.This means that, whereas before, consumers would choose technologies with lower investment costs at the start, but with high annual running costs, financial incentives from national governments will now result in an uptake of heat pumps, which have extremely low usage costs.The prospects for the plumbing industry will potentially be huge as the drive to install the heat pumps are likely to escalate as the energy and financial saving benefits, begin to hit home with the UK consumer. For those about to train as a plumber, becoming qualified to both advise on green energy and install the new heat pump technologies will be crucial to future work prospects.Once the basic NVQ Plumbing 6129 level 2 training is completed, a student will be able to progress onto the NVQ level 3 and from there, undertake to train on a heat pumps course. Not all training centres are properly equipped or fully accreditated to offer these latest courses. AbleSkills has built purpose built classroom workshops, specifically to teach the differing types of renewable energy installations and students can obtain one-to-one tuition from industry experienced tutors in their own plumbing project classroom space.