Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; Heating Bills are set to quadruple under Boris Johnson’s latest climate brainstorm. Many people in Britain cannot afford heating bills of this magnitude. Around 10% of Britons already cannot afford their heating bills, even with government handouts and low cost gas heating.
The lie of the ‘green industrial revolution’
Boris Johnson’s plans to ban gas boilers and rely on hydrogen are beyond crazy.
BEN PILE
9th December 2020Following Boris Johnson’s 10-point plan to advance the UK’s ‘green industrial revolution’, the government is bringing forward its proposed ban on gas boilers in new homes from 2025 to 2023. The 10-point plan also requires replacement gas boilers to be phased out by 2035.
This leaves a huge question hanging over each and every home in Britain: how will they be kept warm? The fact that this question has no answer reveals the lie at the heart of Johnson’s green industrial revolution. It is an anti-industrial revolution, and it is going to create great hardship.
Some 84 per cent of Britain’s homes are connected to the gas network. It sounds obvious to say that they should just switch over to electricity. But the retail price of gas is less than a quarter the price of electricity per kWh. Heating a home with electricity is therefore currently four times more expensive than heating a home with gas. Moreover, switching simply defers the question of where Britain’s energy is going to come from.
…
Point two of the plan is ‘to generate 5GW of low-carbon hydrogen-production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes, and aiming to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade’. Unlike natural gas, hydrogen is not an energy source – it has to be produced. There are two ways to produce hydrogen: electrolysis and steam reforming of natural gas.
Electrolysis at grid scale is simply uneconomic – a highly conservative estimate of the requirements and costs of replacing natural gas with hydrogen produced by electrolysis and powered by wind energy would say that Britain would need 20 times as many wind farms, and the wholesale cost of electricity would increase tenfold.
…
Read more: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/09/the-lie-of-the-green-industrial-revolution/
When my family lived in Britain, in our idyllic but rather elderly house, we didn’t have gas heating because our home was too far from the nearest available mains gas pipe. Even with the help of our wood burner, our home electric heating bills used to peak at £600 / month (US $800 / month) in February.
Boris Johnson has no problem paying his energy bills. If people complain about the new costs perhaps he thinks they are just not making enough of an effort to save the planet, they’re just not pitching in and doing their bit. In any case the inconvenience will be short term, right? The MET predicts the UK will have a warm Mediterranean climate by 2050.
In an interchange with my Conservative Member of Parliament, in response to my piece on UK’s suicide plan, she told me that China had promised to reduce CO2 emissions after 2030 and that solar panels had gotten cheaper. Pointing out her stunning ignorance and naivety, I have withdrawn my vote for her next time.
Unless there’s wide scale voting fraud, how is it the UK along with other nations (Germany comes to mind) continues to elect those Leaders Progressing to fantasy lands?
The difference in intelligence between the average voter in the US and UK and a rock escapes me.
You left out the terminally stupid Canadian voters of which there are more than sane voters.
You know how stupid the average person is, right? Well half of them are stupider than that!
– George Carlin
Not sure he actually said it, but if he didn’t I will.
Oscar Wilde: “I wish I had thought of that.”
Frank Harris: “Don’t worry, Oscar. You will.”
As a geologist, I insist that you do not diss rocks. Be gneiss.
Geologists don’t get drunk. They get schist faced.
shrnfr If faced with a gorilla and a chimpanzee as the two choices voter intelligence does not come into it. One only needs to look at gridwatch .co.uk/wind and then choose solar to see anyone choosing renewals rather than being forced into it is clearly covid brain fogged or sub normal.
Because all of the mainstream parties have a similar policy but only the Green Party are properly explicit about it. The establishment has fought for nearly 5 years to stop us leaving the EU and becoming an independent nation state again. Once that is complete and covid has gone there will be a bigger focus on wasteful, expensive green policies and possibly there will be a significant new party to focus the Conservatives’ minds on a sensible energy policy.
‘Unless there’s wide scale voting fraud, how is it the UK along with other nations (Germany comes to mind) continues to elect those Leaders Progressing to fantasy lands?’
Academia.
Sorry, the US election sucked up the world supply of voting fraud for 2020 (except for the standard set-aside for Venezuela.) The UK will have to wait for next year to fraudulently elect such leaders.
Gents all u need to do I heat your home from the power stored in your Tesla car … easy peasy.
Coeur de Lion
You’re lucky.
Any appeal to my Conservative MP in Dartford, Kent, is immediately referred to HQ in Westminster and the last reply was a badly photocopied standard climate change handout from Westminster.
I have met my MP and can confirm that despite his excellent education, he has no opinions or concern for anything other than his cushy job.
Anyone who voted for Boris Johnson was betrayed. He allowed BLM to destroy monuments. He follows Extinction Rebellion’s creed. Now we now what Extinction in their name means – first winter after the gas heater ban, there will be one.
I really want to blame Princess Nut Nuts (she’s basically had her green claws in him since they met), but Boris has to bear the weight of his own arrogance and incompetence, too. The pair of them are sending this country to penury and ruin.
Yes the UK is now a dictatorship (or a ‘dick tater ship’) lead by a one eyed trouser snake controlled by the Princess Nut Nuts.
If I believed in god, I’d say god help us all !
The UK has always been a Parliamentary dictatorship.
Brexit delivers from the gaping maw of one oppressive regime only for Boris to deliver us into the clutches of the most oppressive and regressive regime on the planet the UN. Michael Bloomberg clearly has completed the last piece of his green jigsaw puzzle in place to rekindle what our lefties in the UK having been at the forefront of climate hysteria convinced we started climate change by commencing the industrial revolution. Tricky dicky is now sleeping with the enemy. If we run out of space on land for the wind turbines and solar panels there quite obviously remains a huge amount of space between Commissar Boris’s ears.
Only around 20,000 people voted for Johnson to be Tory party leader and convention has it that the party leader becomes Prime Minister if that party wins the most seats. The people of Uxbridge & South Ruislip voted for Johnson to represent them in Parliament – a job he doesn’t do because he is PM. In fact any constituency with a minister is not really represented in Parliament and the poor bunch who have the Speaker are certainly not represented. In Johnson’s case only a third of the electorate voted for him anyway. And this system is presented as a ‘democracy’. Of course, up against the USA it is currently a shining example , but it doesn’t work as the people ‘demos’ have no power ‘kratos’.
Still, the hope is that come summer Johnson will be gone, voluntarily most likely, and taking his court prostitute with him but then since she is only in it for the power she will swan off to somebody else.
He and most of his party members are now working for the Dark side.
I assume that during his hospitalisation presumably because of the virus they have made it very clear to him that life is short and could be a lot shorter if he did not obey.
Gas boilers are already banned on new builds. And most are ‘hydrogen ready’ apparently, even if the infrastructure isnt.
Cameron said of guardedly ‘we have to get rid of this green crap’. It seems Boris has become infected, most probably from his girlfriend, who seems to be manipulating him, the old fashioned way most likely.
Electing him has been a disaster. Brexit was what was voted for, not this green crap.
That’s because it has been a deliberate ruse. Boris Johnson was proposed after Theresa May burned away all of her public opinion.
He got the best popular mandate in years – and what is he doing? He introduced Climate Assemblies, allowed every leftist “peaceful protester” to run amok the country, and now will destroy the economy by implementing a green deal in lockstep with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. He was arrogant enough to propose “freedom passes” for general populace.
“Boris Johnson” was a product to be sold to the masses opposed to the global communist transition, to subvert their vote and ensure that everything goes along with the plan. I don’t believe it’s his girlfriend’s influence alone or his recovery from covid. He is not a dictatorial figure that can rule by himself – this was planned and orchestrated to nullify Brexit.
After all, if Britain implements all the measures of the green deal to destroy its economy and subject its people to severe austerity anyway, Brexit does no harm.
They’ll find out hydrogen is a very leaky little atom.
Yes exactly – the cost of upgrading the Uk’s national network of gas pipes to handle hydrogen is unimaginable
Hydrogen is dangerous when handled by competent engineers.
Once it gets routinely handled by weekend plumbers, catastrophe is sure to follow.
Competent engineers make lousy plumbers.
In the UK every person working on gas domestic/idustrial equipment *has* to be trained and qualified to a high standard, and registered as such. It is illegal for an untrained person to do work on domestic/industrial gas equipment. Plus, it will void your insurance.
When an engineer tells a politician that something is physically possible but isn’t economically viable, the answer is usually “then we’ll spend more money”.
London and other urban centers once made extensive use of town gas, from the late 1800’s up through 1960. Retort gas was about 50% hydrogen and 13% CO. Didn’t seem to be a problem then. So, technically not an issue. Economically, well, that’s another story.
Just searched “town gas”. Having been born in the US in the 50s I never knew of this gas or its production.
Always learning something new at WUWT.
Thanks DJ
And hydrogen ruins whatever metal you use to contain it. Look up “hydrogen embrittlement.”
Bro, well, actually not all metals.
“In tensile tests carried out on several structural metals under high-pressure molecular hydrogen environment, it has been shown that austenitic stainless steels, aluminium (including alloys), copper (including alloys, e.g. beryllium copper) are not susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement along with a few other metals.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement#:~:text=In%20tensile%20tests%20carried%20out,with%20a%20few%20other%20metals.
See, I did indeed “look it up”.
As a former power-plant engineer, I’ll predict there will NEVER be any large-scale, large number of “hydrogen” power plants. Ever.
There are NO hydrogen mines.
Robert of Ottawa
December 11, 2020 at 4:11 am
“They’ll find out hydrogen is a very leaky little atom.”
Yes, you’re quite right…as they say:
“Never trust an atom…they make up everything”
The ultimate blame for this green crap lies with Ed Milliband and his disastrous Climate Change Act passed in 2008. There was almost unanimous support in Parliament for this legislation – with only a handful of dissenters. The only way to escape it’s clutches is for Parliament to vote for it’s abolition – something that is not likely with our present bunch of “groupthink” MPs
That 2008 act was Ed Milliband’s in name only. It was actually written by a ‘volunteer’ worker paid by a green activist group to promote their agenda in MP’s offices then given to Milliband to push as his – it’s a sordid little tale and a disaster for the country.
A huge number of former Tory voters are just itching to give Boris’ @rse a booting at the next general election. Nigel Farage could well be the Kingmaker after the next General Election if he decides to run.
Don’t kid yourself. Farage is a chancer and a grifter, he’s always been more interested in making fancy speeches and appearing to do things than actually helping. He took UKIP, a growing and viable party, and turned it into a personal promotional tool, then abandoned it the moment it wasn’t useful for him any more. He’s no different than BoJo underneath.
I once had the luck to sit down one on one with Farage for 20 minutes at a party. I told him straight out I was leaving the UK, so the only reason for staying and chatting was our shared interest in the issues. Farage is no fake.
UKIP was pretty dysfunctional. I think most people’s hearts were in the right place, at least with regard to leaving the UK, but running UKIP must have been like trying to herd a bunch of cats. North of Watford UKIP associations openly expressed political views which would have made Trotsky blush.
Sounds like the American Libertarian Party. It’s a motley collection of people ranging from strict Constitutionalists to total Anarchists. Their idea of foreign policy sums up pretty much to not having any thanks to the isolationist wing of the LP.
They gain little traction in elections because the Democrat controlled news media almost completely ignores the LP and keeps pushing the “two party system” lie.
You are aware that while getting the UK to leave the EU, his wife and children hold EU citizenship and he is constantly attempting to get the same for himself?
As are a very large amount of politicians.
Since we are out of the EU in the new year, Farage will also be out of a job (don’t worry, he will still get his EU pension for his time as an EU MEP…for the rest of his life) (Currently the MEP pension is $10,000 a month)
He won’t suffer any if the GDP tanks by the expected amount after we leave (-10%/year)
Chancer? They are all chancers. Farage was more responsible for Brexit than anyone else, he could have fought the last election but like a lot of us he was sucked in by the belief that Boris would turn out to be a proper Prime Minister and even slightly conservative. Farage was played for a fool just like the rest of us who supported the fake Tories. I don’t think Farage will make the same mistake but he has to deal with the globalist elites and the crooked, biased media.
Farage tried 7 times to get elected as an MP.
7 tries: 7fails.
He could, theoretically, get appointed to the House of Lords and become a party leader and hence PM, without that pesky electoral win……
Boris’ current girlfriend Carrie Symonds is a green freak is a green freak; her mailgn influence is the problem.
Most thinking people in the ruling Conservative Party recognise Boris’ Green Deal for the insanely expensive nonsense it is.
That there is a common problem caused by thinking with the little head.
It all looks wonderful until you do the maths. Cheap energy gives us quality of life and good life expectancy. Cheap fusion generated electricity looks like a solution until you realise that it is always ten years away.
The thing which bothers me about the fusion promise is the sheer cost of it. Take ITER – at least $22 billion, for a plant which might barely break even w/r to energy generation, if it works at all.
Cost and scalability matters, even nuclear fission plants can be made really small. If you can’t scale the capital cost of fusion down from many 10s of billions its just not going to fly, even if it works.
With coal oil and gas and nuclear fission we have plenty of energy for the foreseeable future.
Exactly, the problem isn’t that we do not have cheap energy, the problem isn’t that there is a “climate crisis” because there isn’t (check the Antarctic ice core data), the problem is that politicians are dumber than journalist who are dumber than eco-activists, so we end up with idiot government.
In Michigan our governor & AG are trying to eliminate propane heating for the upper peninsula which needs heating from September through June. These people are just plan dumb and dangerous as a result.
Peanuts compared to weather dependent generators and the energy storage they need.
I believe the best gain so far for fusion is 0.67. That is probably as good as weather dependent generators and their energy storage systems.
There is an illusion that WDGs and storage can produce more energy than it takes to make them but the current manufacture is using low cost fossil fuels. Their price would be entirely unaffordable if they were manufactured from the energy they alone can produce.
There are opportunities to use WDGs in some circumstances and batteries ONLY need to halve in price and triple in cycle life to be useful storage for domestic use in places like mainland Australia. Their widespread use would extend the life of fossil fuels.
It should be evident to most that weaning civilisation off fossils fuels is a tall order. It is sad that there is so much wasted resources on subsidised WDGs using the current technology. At this stage there is only hope that fusion will offer a low cost replacement for fossil fuels – power gains over 1 always seems to be a decade away though.
Project Plowshare came up with a viable design for nuclear fusion power using known technology.
Find a large deep underground salt deposit or aquifer, detonate a H-bomb, siphon off the heat using a heat exchanger. When the cavern cools down recharge it with a new H-bomb.
For some reason they never built it.
The Russians tried mining using a fission bomb. They turned the ore deposited into solid ceramic. The ore zone that the bomb targeted to disintegrate into fragments, melted and then solidified as a near homogenous ceramic.
I guess salt works because it has a lower melting point.
Eric, a very likely explanation for why “they” never built it is that it takes a nuclear fission reaction to detonate a H-bomb (i.e., a nuclear fusion bomb). Therefore, it is impossible to avoid creating highly radioactive products in the salt/rocks surrounding the cavity of an underground H-bomb explosion.
Assuming it is impossible for pre-installed heat-exchanger piping surrounding the H-bomb detonation center to survive the nuclear blast wave intact, one must assume the plan would be to install such HX plumbing after the blast . . . good luck doing that through the resulting fractured salt/rock.
The other alternative, just flooding water into the fractured rock surrounding the blast cavity via drilled, open bore hole wells and then extracting that heated water via separately drilled and lined bore holes has the these two major problems: (a) massive leakage of water into the fractured salt/rock formation, and (b) the extracted hot steam/water containing radioactive particulate contamination.
And heaven help us if anyone is still considering doing such anywhere near an underground aquifer . . . in that case there would be no constraint on how far dangerous radionuclides in might travel away from the blast site.
Maybe some people consider Project Plowshare to be “viable” today. I certainly don’t.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/meet-the-renegades-building-a-nuclear-fusion-reactor-in-your-neighbourhood/
Robin Hewitt: “It all looks wonderful until you do the maths. Cheap energy gives us quality of life and good life expectancy. Cheap fusion generated electricity looks like a solution until you realise that it is always ten years away.”
Things have improved since I was in college in the early 1970’s. Back then, fusion was always fifty years away. Now it’s always ten years away. Maybe in another fifty years, the prospects for fusion will improve to the point where it will always be five years away.
We’ll just go back to the good onl days of frost on the inside of the windows in the bedroom!!
I remember them well!
Major, Cameron and May were all terrible faux Conservatives. I had high hopes for Boris because of his stance on Brexit but he has been a disaster. It’s easy to blame the girl friend but the bottom line he is a weak man and a globalist elite. Farage, or someone with similar beliefs, is the only hope for the U.K.
This is a world wide problem. Even in the US we have had fake conservatives for a generation. Romney? McCain? Even the Bushes. This is the reason for the visceral reaction against Trump. Trump was the first real conservative since Ronald Reagan.
Why Abbot’s own party stabbed him the back. Why ScoMo tries to play both sides.
The evil kokutai is world wide.
Lots of old coal mines in England, they will have to go pick up coal to heat their homes, or cut down the forest. That should reduce global warming.
Wood is easier. It’s not difficult to find enough wood to keep a house going, 2-3 big trees will keep you warm. But any tightening of emissions laws could close this escape hatch.
Not just emissions laws. The new regulations on sale of fuels start in February, with emissions being the excuse. Retail supplies of green wood and house coal are completely banned from February, so are no longer stocked. Larger quantities for heating the country mansion can still be supplied for a couple of years. I prefer the briquettes anyway, so am ok for now, but expect further restrictions to be introduced before the ban on gas boilers.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-takes-action-to-cut-pollution-from-household-burning
How long before someone is killed by trying to stay warm by using their gas oven/hob – or is that the aim so that those can be banned too? Of course, with gas heating being banned from new-builds, they simply will not get connected to the gas network just for the option of cooking on gas.
ROFL the UK gets funnier and funnier.
It is not hard to heat a home with wood, it is almost impossible to heat a very populated modern nation. Look at Madagascar (which is not that populated or modern), their forests are disappearing rapidly.
My house is heated using an air-source-heat-pump.
For an electrical power input of 1.2KW it outputs heat equivalent to 5KW.
Electricity costs 19.2p per KWH peak and 11.3p per KWH off-peak (midnight to 0700z)
This installation qualifies for the (govt scheme) Renewable Heat incentive of £840 each year, and was installed using the nationally-available very-low-interest loan for the full cost of installation (£9700)
https://tradesmencosts.co.uk/air-source-heat-pump/
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/green-energy/grants/rhi
When he first emerged as a public figure, I thought Boris was a bit of a nutter.
He’s just proved himself to be a full blown nutter.
Just watch the mess he left when leaving whatever office.
Oceana’s Carrie Symonds and best pal Zac (lost the election but got a peerage) Goldsmith are pushing the policies but it’s important to note where those policies are coming from: The Committee on Climate Change run by John Selwyn Gummer aka Lord Deben.
The CCC forced cladding on social housing to reduce emissions with disastrous consequences. Grenfell tower burned down and many, many other buildings are now waiting to have dangerous cladding removed. Leaseholders are basically stuffed as a result. They can’t afford it, that’s for sure.
In its last ‘Progress Report’, published in June, the CCC conceded that heat pumps would be ‘the heating solution in fewer than 200,000 homes’.
Currently, hundreds of thousands have been and still are being thrown out of work thanks to Covid 1984 lockdowns and restrictions; the public is in no position to afford any of the changes Deben’s CCC is demanding.
The cons are considerable. They [heat pumps] are hugely costly to set up: costing £10,000 to £15,000 for GSHPs, digging and installation included. You can pay up to £11,000 for the AHSP unit, plus another £3,000 to £11,000 for installation. https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/10/the-heat-pump-revolution-extracting-power-from-the-people/
Once again social housing will be the easy target, homeowners aren’t quite such a pushover. Chris Stark, the CCC’s CEO, has made it clear that the CCC’s proposals are about ‘political posturing’ – ‘and there’s nothing wrong with that’
Will the next COP be impressed? Who cares.
Boris might be in the chair, but there is not one dissenting voice in Parliament. That is a real cause for concern.
Eric, Eric, Eric. You simply don’t get it do you?
Boris and the rest of us enlightened go getting souls have followed the science and there wont be a need for central heating. What little need there is for power will be supplied by ‘supa solar panels'(registered trade mark) which work even in the cloudiest weather and are 82% effective even at night thanks to the ‘moonbeam’ enhanced technology.
Our wind turbines will provide 97% of their rated power even when to the untrained and ignorant observer there is no wind and the turbines look as if they are stationary.
My greatest worry is the likely need for air conditioning, even in winter, but I am sure the brilliant boffins will have though of that.
My biggest dilemma is should my gas central heating boiler decide to expire this winter, should I try to fix it or wait until global warming kicks in any moth now?
tonyb
Not to late to beat the rush and head for the colonies 😉
You may want to hold off moving to the USA until the election is decided. Sleepy Joe Biden is as hairbrained as Boris Johnson.
And far more corrupt.
It is. I’m 73 and too poor to emigrate.
Change to an air-source-heat-pump. You get a grant to install it, it can usually use your existing radiators, and you also get several hundred pounds each year as the renewable heat incentive.
“our wood burner, our home electric heating bills used to peak at £600 / month (US $800 / month) in February.”
Wow! Was it a castle?
I have a small house (160 m2) in Germany and I heat it and produce warm water with an electric (groundwater) heat pump.
Very convenient and cheap.
Some 70 Euro monthly (means daily 7kWh of electricity), even considering the extraorbital German electricity price. Zero maintenance costs since 12 years.
I do not understand who needs the gas heating.
Alex
How much did the initial installation cost including pump and insulation and how large is your garden that enables you to have a ground source heat pump?
You mention ‘ground water’ but I assume you mean a device with pipes embedded in the soil a metre or so deep?
tonyb
The pump uses ground water, so the size of the garden is irrelevant.
The company that installed the system, drilled a hole some 10 meters deep, down to the ground water layer – you may check where it is in your place.
Not everywhere it is allowed to drill that deep, depends on the local administration.
The total costs were (roughly)
€10.000 the drilling, cables, etc.
€7.000 the heat pump
€10.000 for the floor heating in the whole house: I do not have radiators.
The floor heating is mandatory. Without it, the heat pump makes little sense.
I saved the gas pipeline installation (no gas in the house!). This was quite important for me, so I do not have any gas-related risks).
The government gave me a reduced (by 1%, year 2008) interest rate loan (up to €150.000 total) for the home.
So, altogether it was a zero-cost installation that saved me a lot of heating costs.
Zero maintenance costs are also sweet and it is automatic.
I never switch it on or off.
In a hot summer, it inverses. It collects the heat from the floor to produce the hot water, so it reduces the temperature inside the home.
Alex
Thanks for that. Very interesting. I do not know of any ground water installations such as you describe over here, so something already 10 times more expensive than the equivalent gas boiler installation would presumably become even more expensive when it is something so unusual as it would be over here.
I do not see how that could ever pay for itself unless it is heavily subsidised or gas prices are deliberately made much more expensive.
Tonyb
Tony,
It is clear that Alex built the home from the ground up NEW. If the loan was only 150,000 euros, what was his out of pocket costs? I cannot believe the 150K was the total cost of construction. If it was, just the heat pump and associated install would be 20% of the cost of the home, before window and insulation upgrades.
Perhaps Alex will give us the FULL picture of what he did. Also what subsidies other than the reduced interest rate he received to do the “RIGHT” thing. You know, using other peoples money because, unlike 99% of people, he had his own land to build on with a ground up build.
Having been a building inspector and plans examiner and knowledgeable with regards to the US Model Energy Code, I am well aware of how to build a very energy efficient home, much of which is determined by the size and quality of the windows and doors. The better the U value the more expensive the fenestration.
I am planning to build a new smaller principle residence adjacent to my current home which is much larger than we need and will be used as a vacation rental. We are at a high elevation without a requirement for air conditioning. We use wood to heat but have an LPG central furnace for when needed. Natural gas is not available. Being in fractured mountain, there is NO ground water within 300 feet below our property and drilling a well would be cost prohibitive.
I have looked into using in floor heating and have discounted it due to the HIGH initial cost of initial installation compared to a gas forced air furnace. Ongoing cost will be LOW especially due to the use of wood for heat when we are in the home. Currently, when on the road, we keep the thermostat at 45 to keep from freezing the water piping and the cost is LOW even for LPG which is more costly than natural gas. Our current log cabin cost about $800.00 last year when we were in the house for most of the winter almost entirely using propane for heat due to my lazy butt not doing any woodcutting for the last couple of years before I retired and running out in late November. That was about $150.00 per month and included water heating, cooking and the clothes dryer during the winter.
So the new house I am looking to build will be less than 1/3rd the size of our cabin, 800 sq.ft., with a basement garage below. It will be reasonably well built from an “energy use” perspective with good quality windows and doors and quality insulation properly installed. I currently do not intend to use in-floor heating, it would increase the cost by $thousands compared to a furnace with a lot more “moving” parts.. I will use LPG for back up heat, water heating and cooking, again no need for cooling. I am also looking into a gas wall heater, and not installing a FAU, much cheaper and, with the size of the home, a reasonable even less expensive alternative. An electric heat/vent/light in the bathroom, as we currently have in our cabin, would provide plenty if heat there. We will not go all extravagant on reducing “energy” use due to the HUGH initial cost for such. Good construction practices and a reasonably tight home will be good enough for me.
As for MY conservation background. I have use OPM to add insulation and/or better window to 3 homes that I have owned over the years with US federal tax credits for the purchase of materials which I installed.
When my parents built their retirement home on property with easy access to groundwater in 1983 I recommended they use a ground source heat pump and design for passive solar which they did. The original unit lasted about 25 years and has since been replaced. Being an OPEN system, the 25 years was really surprising. It has been well worth the added cost due to the cooling and dehumidification needs of the location. Their home was also built with triple glazed Anderson vinyl windows and sliding doors, expensive but excellent, making for an energy efficient home, probably in the top 1% for that era. The electric bills are still low, even with electric water heat and clothes dryer. No natural gas available there. Having been configured with south facing sliders at the basement with an exposed concrete floor poured on 2 inched of foam, it is an excellent passive solar home. Since it was never used as such, opening and closing drapes for full heating effect for example, the full benefits have not been realized. A modern control system would reduce heating costs even more. But remember, this was an almost perfect location, south facing hill with an unobstructed exposure to the south and unlimited ground water and sandy soil for the return water to drain into. Not many people have the opportunity to use these methods.
My existing home and the new one also have unobstructed southern exposure and the heat gain through the largely glazed southern wall when it is sunny in the winter. The amount of solar heating is surprising since the only thing done to assist with passive solar was a tile floor. We bought the property for the price (a difficult lot to build on) and situated the home for the view, the solar benefits were a bonus.
So, Alex, how about the rest of the story? Total cost, % to upgrade the heating system, realistic cost/benefit. Would it be the same if the government let “energy” sources compete on an equal footing, would it be worth it if electric rates were not so high due to government interference? Just asking. If I were in your shoes I would probably have done what you did, so I am not attacking your actions. It is just that I don’t think a ditch digger should subsidize your, or my, house, or a college degree, or the Kennedy Center.
https://wtop.com/local/2020/03/kennedy-center-funding-included-in-coronavirus-stimulus-package/
Drake
Thanks for your very interesting comment. Unfortunately not many of us can build our own house and the cost of retrofitting heat pumps seems prohibitive and will not be effective without the correct insulation which would be technically challenging and likely eat into room space.
tonyb
If it were so great it wouldn’t need government. And only to fix a problem (CO2) that’s not a problem .
What was the capital cost of the system, or was it already installed when you bought the house? Our last gas bill was about $38 for 40 therms (1 therm = 100,000 BTU), but we cook as well as heat the water and house. That included all the infrastructure charges as well. Our house is about the size of yours. Does your 70 euros cover all electricity or just the portion for the heat pump?
no. it is just the heating + hot water.
normal electricity costs me another €70 monthly – it’s Germany!
if your gas is that cheap, stay with it. sure!
There exist gas-powered heat pumps (including gas absorption heat pumps, and gas engine heat pumps types). You don’t need to waste expansive electricity for heat pumping.
I despair at all this eco rubbish which Boris has bought into big time … no doubt influenced by his eco activist (current) girlfriend, his Extinction Rebellion father, the ‘Population Matters’ David Attenborough (once a scientist) and of course the wack-job (and eco hypocrite extraordinaire) Prince Charles. What a bunch!
I seriously question whether Boris is a fifth columnist carrying out his mission to destroy the UK economy which is already on its knees because of Covid and the looming ‘hard’ Brexit.
Attenborough was a cameraman who became a narrator because the doomladen sound of his voice characterised the bbcs leftist ideology. The bbc like every other media organisation chooses its presenters by the sound of the voice. 85% of the message is characterised by the sound of the voice only 15% is content. Its a highly manipulative medium which imposes suspension of disbelief a unique trait monopolised and exploited by all confidence tricksters. The bbc trades on a reputation which under close examination it does not deserve. Attenborough has indulged in his hobby at our expense using his expression spewing poison into the atmosphere to make programs in which he illustrates reasons why we should not follow his example. A slick salesman of dubios credentials mouthing the same political connivance dont do what i do do what i say. He is a fraud a rent seeker posing as a profit, i despair.
lovely windy day here today.
Current UK power supply is 24% renewable (it rarely is more than this)
or, to put it another way, 76% of the cars, homes etc are being powered by nuclear and gas (primarily).
The green nonsense will end as more and more of the population meet the harsh reality of the laws of physics, when their lights go out and their homes go cold.
Farage is one of the better politicians. As a general class of people, they are mainly chancers, liars or cheats.
Why?
If you think about who and where politicians come from, it becomes understandably. from the UK perspective, the majority of people are not interested at all in politics. Of those who are, some, pay and join a political party. Of those who join a party, some are active members, ie go to meetings rather than just the social events.
Of those who are active, a few put themselves forwards to be selected to be a candidate.
Some candidates are votes in to become councilors or MPs
The most popular MP of the leading party at the time becomes the prime minister.
To get to the top in UK politics, requires people who have unusual: interests, personalities & egos.
It is the nature of the beast. You can not separate the politician from the required human nature that got them to be elected.
Farage is in the process of renaming UKIP to the Reform party which gives me great hope.
Nigel is behind Laurence Fox on the curve
Fox has already taken the hit – losing agent, career etc for standing up to the critical race mob.
Nigel – a man of principle – has a nice copper bottomed EU pension. He mostly opines for Breitbart these days. Not a man to be trusted, he has a habit of walking away..
$10,000 each month, for the rest of his life.
Plus annual increases of inflation-plus.
Hardly unique to UK politics, surely. I’ve no idea who first suggested that wanting to be a politician should be a disqualification for being one, but I think they were onto something.
You have described the problem with politicians perfectly. My solution is to select each MP randomly from the electoral register. Then you would have a parliament of 650 men and women true.
About 12 months ago I went back to my old school (Leeds Uni) for an afternoon presentation organised by the guy leading Leeds Uni’s efforts against Climate Change.
Piers somebody-or-the-other, most notable for being scruff and having such a bad stammer as to be painful and almost unintelligible – bit like King George 6 in the film.
The enquiring mind here wants to know how he became/is the head of a Climate Dept that employs over 190 people inside Leeds Uni.
WTF are they all doing all day?
A bright young thing from the appropriate Government dept was the leading speaker (forget his name) but it was *he* who had the unshakeable belief in hydrogen. And himself.
It was utterly cringe-worthy – he was soooo clueless on science, engineering and technology
Another one we’ve come upon here for her Marxist outlook was Julia (Steenburger or something like)
A tiny timid mouse-like creature who, barely audible, told the assembled that she came to the presentation on her push-bike.
They spontaneously broke into applause. I felt sick
This was until I found myself faced with a £30 ‘Release Fee’ from the university car-park – down to £7 if you could blagg the 6-digit PIN code out of somebody. Push-biking made sense then, especially for those with a reputation for being careful with money. Know what I mean?
Bless them, they opened a Q&A at the end – employing a pair of roving wireless microphones.
First query got through but a 2nd query using the other mic revealed it to have a Flat Battery
You Could Not Make It Up. Perfectly Pythonesque
I did find out what the University Staff sort-of do. SFA
– when I went into the University Carpark at 13:00 it was packed. (Apart from the dozens of spaces set aside for electric vehicles)
I came back at 15:30 and it was deserted
Nice work if you can get it eh?
No. i think Boris is planning on Heat Pumps, most of which will be hidously expensive Ground Source pumps that freeze your garden solid..
or..
Air source pumps. Much less expensive but utterly useless in the UK ‘climate’
At temps below 10 Celsius the outdoor heat exchanger starts to freeze up (because if the relentless damp in UK climate) and at less than 5 Celsius outdoor temps they give up completely and switch on one great big fook off (electric) immersion heater to (try) keep the house warm.
Even before you need radiators the size of the walls in your house for any useful heat to come out of them
Pythonesque yet again
Boris and Nut Nuts HAVE TO GO
It appears many have poorly insulated or sealed homes. Any home that needs huge amounts of energy to keep warm should start on improving insulation and seals first. Just using bigger or more expensive heating systems of any type is putting the cart before the horse.
There are two new sources of energy that likely will make the whole issue moot in the near future. Go to e-catworld.com and read up on the E-CAT SKL (e-cat, Rossi), and the Hydrino energy source (BLP, Mills). These both hold promise for all the required power for extremely low prices. They both happen to be GREEN also, but I am a skeptic and think that feature is irrelevant.
Hydrino? If the hydrino were a real state of hydrogen, most hydrogen now be in that state, with the resulting inability to engage in any ordinary chemistry. I see Mills has fussed with this for 29 years now. That is a long time with no significant results.
Leonard posted: “There are two new sources of energy that likely will make the whole issue moot in the near future . . . read up on the E-CAT SKL (e-cat, Rossi), and the Hydrino energy source (BLP, Mills).”
Errrr . . . didn’t you forget about cold fusion?
It is interesting that none of these “Green politicians” ever have Engineering Degrees. None of the Civil Service do either. The combination is fatal to the entirety of our country. They simply throw money at completely impractical ideas, while listening to alleged Scientists who know no mathematics, statistics, or in fact anything much at all.
The Covid statistics presented to us are nonsense (proof of my claim above), as most ordinary people realise now. Deaths within 28 days of a positive test, whatever the cause? That has got to be the most useless statistic ever invented! The only one worth much is excess deaths compared with the highest reached in the last 5 years, population corrected (or if you want to include flu or similar, the mean of 5 years), but this number is very difficult to even obtain. Infections based on an unreliable PCR test which is grossly over sensitive and throws up 33% or so of symptomless cases? What other virus gives symptomless transmission? These are simply false positives from something else, perhaps a single piece of dead DNA.
Truth. Your words make perfect common sense.
From foot and mouth to covid to climate change every time politicians have resorted to a “model” to resolve a crisis imaginary or real the solutions offered up by the model have always made the crisis worse yet these idiots still believe that all the answers they need live somewhere inside those gleaming black boxes if only someone could find them. In 2001 6 million cows and sheep were killed on the instructions of the model most were completely unnecessary. My Adobe software gets updated regularly for bug fixes as does windows but politicians still have more faith in models than common sense ignoring the fact that any piece of software is only the product of a human being who believe it or not might just develop software that replicates his own beliefs, imagine! Belief is the most dangerous word in the English language.
From foot and mouth to covid to climate change every time politicians have resorted to a “model” to resolve a crisis imaginary or real the solutions offered up by the model have always made the crisis worse yet these idiots still believe that all the answers they need live somewhere inside those gleaming black boxes if only someone could find them. In 2001 6 million cows and sheep were killed on the instructions of the model most were completely unnecessary. My Adobe software gets updated regularly for bug fixes as does windows but politicians still have more faith in models than common sense ignoring the fact that any piece of software is only the product of a human being who believe it or not might just develop software that replicates his own beliefs, imagine!
Why?
Groupthink and a complete exaggerated view of the risk climate change poses. If a dinosaur killer Asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, nothing matters except preventing the collision. I think these guys feel the same about climate change.
BoJo = populist in name only
Boris Johnson is the anti-Churchill.
Sure is a good thing the brits voted conservative. I wonder how long before Canadians are freezing in the dark because that is the goal folks.
£600 per month for heating bills in February? Did you live in a palace?! We live in a five-bedroomed house in England, and our monthly combined gas and electricity bill for all our energy needs is only £62.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ Demand 40.08GW Coal 3.05GW Solar 0.65GW Wind 3.43GW. Therefore right now we would need 105,600 2.5mw turbines or 264gw of turbine capacity to meet demand. Over the last two months on consecutive days we would have needed 1.6 million, 803,000, 1.32 million, 176,000 turbines but Boris thinks every home can be serviced for an extra 40GW’s. Lord Deben has not denied that an all electric UK would have a maximum winter peak load of 150GW’s. Cost of rewiring the UK GWPF says is £466 billion with every road and path dug up but like every infrastructure project in the UK HS2 being a classic example you could expect that number to double or triple. BBC Panorama said retro fitting a 3 bed semi with a complete ground source heat pump system would cost £30k plus another £80k for bespoke insulation to be craned over the top. Total cost about £3.3 trillion. Ground and air source heat pumps cannot respond to sharp temperature drops. You have to manage the output from year to year otherwise there wont be enough left for the next year. These systems are ok for 50C but you need 70C and above for CH which is why you need two electric boilers to replace one gas boiler.
Baroness Brown just threw darts at a board without any research and one by one every scheme put in place to be zero Co2 has fallen down.
My air-source heat pump heats the house with a circulating water temperature of 37C. When it gets sub-zero outside it ups it to 44C. Inside temp at the moment is 21C, outside temp 7C and circulating water temp of 39C. It works well. The cost is around 22p/hour. I get an average of £700/yr payment back as part of the RHI scheme.
https://www.gov.uk/domestic-renewable-heat-incentive
Griff tells us the UK is becoming one of the most advanced nations … glad I don’t live there and this is going to be so much fun to watch over the next year.
Griff is beyond parody.
Have a laugh at this….
Paying (for) the bill
Cladding Safety, Issue 1536
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/in-the-back
I dare say Biden and Harris are going to reciprocate – bigtime.
Pass the popcorn.
What the hell so you are leased a defective building and they want to charge you to fix it. I was struggling with the rationale behind it but I guess the left tard logic goes they are companies (AKA capitalist bad) and so someone has to pay to fix defect so it has to be the bad people.
Surely the leaseholders can take civil damages against the parties who approved and installed the defective materials or is that avenue cut-off by the bill?
Further up in the thread I stated that the UK is a Parliamentary dictatorship. And that is exactly what it is.
clauses 88 and 89 of the Building Safety Bill, now before parliament, allow leaseholders to be charged to remediate historical safety defects
…
Not all is lost for leaseholders – yet. Lib Dem peer Baroness Pinnock secured an amendment to the Fire Safety Bill, also before the Lords, to prohibit “passing remediation costs on to leaseholders and tenants”
Parliament decides. Like it or lump it.
My views on Parliament cannot be published here.
Unreal… https://www.centralmaine.com/2020/12/10/maine-signs-wind-focused-clean-energy-accord-with-united-kingdom/
” and aiming to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade’. ”
If it catches fire due to a hydrogen leak igniting and burns the town down , was the town heated by hydrogen ?
😉
I can see it now, the modern day Hindenburg
Check the green’s bank account.
Government is for the benefit of the population except where bribes and treason are concerned.
Johnson may well turn out to be among the worst PM in UK history
All that promise . . . for nothing.
Boris appears to have been Californicated.
Or Carriefornicated.
Boris reminds me a lot of Hillary Clinton.
When it was pointed out to her that many businesses couldn’t afford all the new taxes and regulations that she supported, her response was:
“I’m not responsible for every under capitalized company in the country.”
In other words, if you can’t afford the new taxes, it’s your fault.
The original article is extremely poorly conceived and written.
There is no equivalency between electrical kwh and natural gas hearing power. There’s a reason natural gas is a lot better for cooking/heating – it isn’t just price.
Boris Johnson was supposed to be the Tory leader who would lead Brexit, but has he seriously thought of the effects of converting from natural gas to hydrogen as an energy source?
As the article states, the two main methods of obtaining hydrogen are steam-methane reforming and electrolysis. Steam-methane reforming is frequently used in petroleum refineries to generate hydrogen for desulfurization of kerosene, diesel, and heavier petroleum fractions, which is normally consumed onsite. The reaction proceeds in two steps, but the overall reaction is
CH4 (methane) + 2 H2O (steam) –> CO2 + 4 H2
If the hydrogen generated is then burned to produce energy, the reaction would be
4 H2 + 2 O2 –> 4 H2O
Combining these two reactions, the net steam-methane reforming and hydrogen combustion reaction would be
CH4 + 2 O2 –> CO2 + 2 H2O
which is the exact same reaction as the direct combustion of natural gas, with exactly the same emission of CO2 per unit methane consumed. The steam-methane reforming reaction takes place only at high temperature in the presence of catalyst, which requires heat input, and not all of the waste heat can be recovered, due to that pesky Second Law of Thermodynamics.
So, if direct combustion of natural gas is replaced by steam-methane reforming followed by burning of hydrogen, the net energy output is lower, for the same emission rate of CO2. Boris Johnson would not reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions, he would only make the process less efficient.
Electrolysis consumes the same amount of energy in generating hydrogen as the energy obtained by burning it (First Law of Thermodynamics), so there is no energy advantage to this process. The problem would be using existing natural gas pipes to deliver hydrogen. At equal temperature and pressure, burning natural gas yields 3.3 times more heat per unit volume than hydrogen. In order to deliver the same amount of heat to a furnace using hydrogen, the hydrogen would have to be at 3.3 times the absolute pressure as natural gas, which would increase compression costs for the supplier of hydrogen or natural gas.
Are there any scientists or engineers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, to explain to him the abject stupidity of his hydrogen policy?
….”aiming to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade’.
If the hydrogen leaks and catches on fire and burns the town down will they say the town was heated by hydrogen ?
😉
What has happened, I’m from Sweden and obviously not privy to the finer point of British politics but Boris didn’t strike me as an alarmist. Did something change or did I misread him from the start?
Fredrik B.
December 11, 2020 at 1:17 pm
You’re right…he was sensible at first then he met his new wife who is a much younger and rabid green alarmist. She pulls the strings…just like wacky Nancy Regan did with Ronald.
The pandemic didn’t work as expected. Back to time proven population control by freezing winters.
Attached are some interesting fact from the Breitbart article which shows how ridiculous the UK zero carbon plan is.
The Climate Emergency is just called an ‘emergency’
Because the word ‘emergency’ gives the government fascism power, to force people to do idiotic, ridiculous, things that do not make engineering, environmental, or economic sense and will make zero difference to Climate Change.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/10/great-reset-bojo-wants-to-quadruple-your-heating-bill/
The abundance of gas, and the ease with which it can be stored, transported and used, makes it the cheaper and more convenient form of energy compared with electricity. Hence Britain’s gas network transports nearly three times as much energy as the electricity grid (876 TWh vs 324 TWh).
Furthermore, nearly 40 per cent of electricity is produced by gas-fired power stations. To replace gas with electricity implies scaling up the grid and generating capacity by more than five times.
This, and many other implications of Johnson’s incautious 10-point plan, make it perhaps the most absurdly expensive political folly ever to have been inflicted on a population.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55276769, UK to stop supporting overseas fossil fuel based projects.
Now guarantee fuel poverty continues.
I thought that hydrogen could leak through ANY material, being such a small molecule. With losses being up to 2% a day from pressurised tanks.
How in that case, do they propose to keep hydrogen under pressure within thousands and hundreds of thousands of miles of small pipework?
R
Dear Borris,
If you are going to condemn an entire nation to energy poverty to impress a click (or bird as you say in the UK), could you at least choose a hot chick?