Reposted from Not A Lot Of People Know That
DECEMBER 31, 2020
By Paul Homewood
Last week, the government’s Climate Change Committee published its ‘Sixth Carbon Budget’ recommending what it thinks the government needs to do in order to meet its target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Much comment revolved around the proposed ban on new gas boilers from 2033, after which homes would have to be heated either by electric heat pump or possibly by hydrogen boilers, should the government decide to repurpose the existing gas distribution network for hydrogen.
But there is a far bigger nasty concealed in the document that was hardly reported: a proposal that the sale of properties be banned from 2028 unless they score at least a grade C in an energy performance certificate (EPC).
This has serious implications because millions of British homes will not reach this level and cannot be brought up to this standard at any reasonable cost. I have serious doubts as to whether an EPC energy grade means anything, given that it is just a crude estimate of how well an computer algorithm thinks it ought to perform, not a test of how it performs in practice.
Moreover, these reports seem highly sensitive to who is carrying them out – I hade two done on my home in the space of a year, one of which gave me a score of 42 out of 100 and the second, after I had replaced some windows with better-insulated ones, gave me a score of 32. The report informed me that even if I undertook all the recommendations in the EPC, which consisted of fitting solar panels and replacing the boiler, it was only going to bring me up to a score of 49 – a grade E.
In other words, I could spend over £10,000 and still I wouldn’t be allowed to sell my house and nobody would be allowed to buy it. Not only that, the Climate Change Committee recommends that mortgages shouldn’t be allowed on homes with a EPC rating of less than ‘C’ by 2033. So you, you won’t be able to sell, or to have a mortgage on your home. What are you supposed to do then?
There are nine million homes in Britain which, like mine, have solid walls. It is going to be virtually impossible to bring many of them up to a ‘C’ rating unless their walls are insulated. You can do that ‘cheaply’ by stick insulation on the inside or outside, but even so that will cost – in the case of a three bedroom home – between £7000 and £13,000, according to Which. But it is fraught with problems. If your house wasn’t built with a damp proof course – which applies to just about any house built before the 1920s – you could be trapping in damp. More realistically, to achieve a grade ‘C’ rating you would have to undertake a complete refurbishment, stripping the property back to the bricks and starting again. For millions of homeowners, that is not an option.
Has the Climate Change Committee thought for the moment of the repercussions of its recommended policy: to make millions of homes unsaleable? These unsaleable properties would be in addition, of course, to the many thousands of recently-built homes which, although they notionally have excellent energy performance, are unsaleable thanks to flammable cladding and insulation.
The virtue signallers are not concerned with reality. They write legislation that cannot ever be met but when has virtue signalling had to be validated?
Almost all the ‘Net Zero’ ideas are infeasible but they have met their target of being put into law. Then it will happen right? The entire electrical grid will be magically upgraded right into every home in 9 years; there will be plenty of spare reliable baseload power to feed the new grid demands. Because MPs and the CCC said so.
It is very possible that the number of people dying due to cold in 2030 will exceed all the deaths this year as people are forced off grid. But then politicians have never worried about excess winter deaths.
They follow Pharaoh: “So let it be written, so let it be done.” All it takes is to pass a law or regulation. No need to actually follow through. No need to make sure the law actually can be implemented. Just write it, and it will be done. Problem solved!
Exactly. Idiot gobshites who can’t actually do anything ever. No problem – just legislate that other people have to do something, sometime. There are purportedly educated people who will recycle these turds for them.
And the very real, on going problem? The voters in these jurisdictions simply write articles about how bad the laws are. No “carbon life form lives matter”; no “kick the loons out”; actually just a lot of whimpers along with a few prayers that “this time we’ll all revolt”.
And after 50 years of propaganda as science to the point that fully 100% of the voters know it’s just fake – including the loons.
These climate alarmists are ignorant beyond belief. With the coming advent of molten salt small modular reactors there will be as much cheap low carbon power as you could ever want.
Speaking of ignorant beyond belief, here comes ColMosby to push a technology that has yet to be built as the solution to all problems, real and imagined.
Mark, the Col. doesn’t get that his thinking is precisely what’s wrong with the thinking that gave us the phony ‘crisis’ of unproven dangerous warming and the solution of using ruinables to solve it: the idea that tech would come along and make it work – afterall the sun and wind are free aren’t they?
Now I understand the difference between a sceptic and a rigid contrarian. Very often these are the kind of ‘adversary’ that the woke folk use to ‘debunk’ the critiques of the thinking sceptic. We’re “anti science” knuckle draggers not to be taken seriously. Sheesh, we don’t need this kind of help!
“Too cheap to meter!”. Now where have I heard that before? It never happened of course, nor ever will.
This technology was employed in a government-operated test reactor in the 60s or 70s. While the technology and claims of performance and safety are sound, the operation was limited by progressive corrosion of materials. Has this issue been resolved?
You can install one at your place if you like, but you’re not putting one of those in my backyard.
The Col knows that a commercially feasible design for a molten salt reactor doesn’t yet exist; there are currently unsolved corrosion problems that need to be addressed before such a design could be done and the public doesn’t yet support them. While the MSR shows promise, it will be many decades before they will generate any significant amount of power. Other designs for Small Modular Reactors will come on line before MSRs, but they are also several decades away from picking up much of the baseline electricity generation load from natural gas and coal. I’d like to believe that ColMosby is right, as I’m a PhD nuclear engineer (fusion emphasis), but he’s just not correct. He is right, however, in that MSR and SMR reactors will beat fusion to commercialization.
I do agree that climate alarmists are ignorant beyond belief. Luckily, there is no looming climate crisis so we have time for an orderly transition to nuclear once we start to run out of fossil fuels in 50 – 100 years (natural gas), 150+ years (oil), and 300+ years (coal).
I’m an engineer at a nuclear plant that uses ocean water for cooling. If there is a substance in God’s universe that cannot be attacked by salt water, I would like to know what it is so we can try to make pipe and heat exchangers out of it!
Now just imagine the effect of molten salt…. !!!!!
Only thing I can thing of might be some sort of exotic ceramic material
Ceramics are notriously subject to acid attack, and if you do increase their resistance, as with crucibles, they become very prone to thermal shock.
That’s easy, mercury. The tough part is figuring out how to make use of it!
Had an instructor in nuke school tell us that seawater is the worlds greatest solvent, it will dissolve most substances given time. I’ve not seen anything to disabuse the idea. After schooling and spending 4+ years at sea I laugh at the ignorance of wave energy and sea based windmills proponents. They don’t have a clue just how tough and costly of an environment the ocean is. It really cracks me up when they say the Navy has it figured out and we just have to follow their example.
How good is platinum? We used platinum crucibles for doing sodium fusions but I don’t know what the long term effect on the crucibles was.
To the greenies, that’s a FEATURE rather than a problem.
Exactly. In the UK, purveyors of external cladding have seen profits tumble since the Grenfell fire demonstrated these green improvements were death-traps.
There will have been industry kickbacks pushing for this legislation.
So you’re out of luck if you spent all your money on flood control or house-on-stilts improvements following Griff’s advice or efficient summer cooling for predicted heat waves. Maybe your abandoned property could be utilized by the climate youth league—for camp fires.
I wonder what much of the Royal family’s ancient properties would score?
Tear them down and build new flats!!
Soon to be King of the USA, Prince Charles, is enthralled with the new finance priorities echoed at the Davos Special, the Great Reset.
That would make Biden, Viceroy of the Old Colony.
Think I am joking? Will he be be-knighted like Dr. Schellnhuber the Great De-Carbonizer? Tinkering with the Constitution is easily avoided with “understandings”.
It doesn’t have to make sense. As we see with the Biden clan, politicians are among either the most clueless or those who care not at all.
Just put a little dinghy in the front yard and identify it as a boat.
Decarbonizing housing? Sounds like a Real Estate For Dummies, er, millionaires, article.
Can’t afford to decarbon Grandma’s house you inherited? Take 40% of it’s listed value and never concern yourself with that nasty old carbon. (Shakes head)
Progressive War on the Middle Class. The rich won’t care. The poor will get subsidized or free housing. The rest will be made to pay up.
The rich will care when the pitchforks are sharpened and torches are lit.
The rich can afford to leave.
Just for London the population is projected to be in 20 years time 10.35 million. As of 2019 London has 3.56 million places to live. If the O.P.’s habitat law results in many dwellings being de-listed then that is going to worsen the UK current crisis in affordable housing (“social” housing, or in Americanese “public” housing).
I doubt this policy will be much of a problem in London (or most other urban areas). The lots will generally be more valuable than old non-compliant structures. This will have disproportionate impact on rural, less affluent homeowners – as the progressives no doubt intend.
The 1984-esque vision for the UK is Soviet style, gray concrete block public housing, equipped withBig Brother monitors, spreading as far as the eye can see.
The climate scam is after all the elites way to control the unwashed masses and keep them on the plantation and under Big Brother surveillance.
For deplorables, yes. For the elite, and special interests (e.g. protected classes, supervisory classes, quota set asides), no.
Soviet style blocs had a purpose. They were build to withstand impact wave of an atomic weapon that was detonated nearby the city (rather than over the city).
1) There were large spaces between buildings – long distances between buildings, allowing for the air from the impact wave of a nearby detonation to go through the empty space, rather than destroying the buildings, as they would in a Western (tightly packed) cities.
2) Buildings were made of steel-reinforced concrete, which is like a bunker material, much stronger than brick houses popular in the West.
3) Cities were designed with air corridors – long stretches of empty spaces (eg. used as parks with trees), formally to provide the air to the center of the city, informally – to allow for the impact wave to go through.
I told my neighbor that something like this was coming to the United States. There was a bill on housing or energy that did not get passed but was right behind the un-affordable care act but Obama didn’t get it through in time before he lost the house. It was another 5000+ page monstrosity. And it contained provisions about what you would have to do to your house in order to sell it.
Take out a 95% mortgage before lenders wake up to the issue, then just abandon it if that day comes. The lender can’t sell it either, takes a huge loss, and must be bailed out by the government. So stick the government with the bill (paid for primarily by the idiots who elected the government).
Repurpose gas distribution for Hydrogen? LOL! Damned near impossible at any cost.
“…should the government decide to repurpose the existing gas distribution network for hydrogen.”
Ah yes. All that is needed is a Government decision to switch to hydrogen, or wind, or solar. And Government officials doubtless think that.
“So you, you won’t be able to sell, or to have a mortgage on your home. What are you supposed to do then?”
At some point, when they’ve taken everything you own away, you’ve left with nothing to lose. When millions of people have nothing to lose, revolutions get started.
Which is why they’ve wanted to take all the guns away.
In Britain they did. Now they’re after the knives and pointing sticks.
-And the pineapples and bananas!
Easy to sort. Just provide grants off the magic money tree.
£10,000 is nothing.
It is just a monthly wage.
Who cares?
For you maybe. For some of us that is a big portion of our yearly pension.
I somehow get the impression that Alex was being sarcastic..
Or talking from the point of view of the climate scammer chiefs……
It is now past midnight in the UK. Congratulations, folks.
Free at last,
Free at last,
Thank God Almighty, you’re Free at Last.
(Slightly OT, but I thought that it needed to be said.)
Cheers on Brexitting mission accomplished.
You are right, I hope the plus is higher than the minus for GB.
“Has the Climate Change Committee thought for the moment of the repercussions of its recommended policy:”
Thought, from to think, is a foreign word on the one side, on the other an impossibility for people with a certain believe.
Nothing new, there already are unsellable homes..
Quote:
“”Flat owners hoping to make the most of the Stamp Duty tax break have found themselves trapped in their homes because cladding has rendered them unsellable“”
https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/03/cladding-crisis-making-3000000-peoples-homes-worthless-13213365/
Quote:
“”Three years after the Grenfell fire many buildings with dangerous cladding still have 24-hour fire safety patrols – introduced originally as a temporary measure. Now, thousands more homeowners are being forced to pay for “waking watches” with no end in sight. “”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55219607
If you dig deeper into this cladding catastrophe, you’ll find that the cladding manufacturers make the protagonists in Climategate look like butter-wouldn’t-melt little angels
The true madness of it all is that this cladding was to improve the heat performance of these homes.
I still don’t get it either. Apart from asbestos, what substance are they going to use for insulation that isn’t going to be plastic-based and thus flammable.
Closed cell foam is the only real thing to use to really slow convection while having low thermal conductivity but still allowing moisture permeability
How can they be so thick?
Slight nit-pick: Wasn’t the UK ban on new gas-fired heating supposed to start in 2023 – not 2033?
But the way the criminally insane muppets are behaving and moving goalposts it’ll be 2013 when the gas-fired ban is supposed to start
Rockwools are highly insulating and not flammable. Aerogels too.
One of the issues is the cladding manufacturers mis-sold their products. They stated the panels were fire rated for high rise buildings when they weren’t.
The architects’ drawings were also lacking.
And all to save a few £’s instead of doing a proper job
There were government inspectors, reviewing plans and installation, no?
That is why you have building departments/inspectors, to hold builders and suppliers to a standard. But when the standards are deleted by POLITICIANS, the inspectors do their job to the laws as adopted. If I remember correctly, it was the politicians with the mean green climate change narrative that mandated the “upgraded” insulation and forced the acceptance of the cladding.
The cladding IS ok if used per its listing in the US. If I remember my research at the time, never on a high rise building, I think 3 stories max, with specific type of construction beneath.
Now that the politicians have forced the disaster, they are overreacting if they are causing problems on the sale of single family homes or smaller apartment buildings. Of course with our modern media, I am sure “reporters” have blown the problem on such smaller buildings way out of proportion.
The Grenfell building inspector was a local authority employee – with no experience of this type of work.
The standards were not deleted by politicians, although a few decades ago approved building inspectors were introduced. These were private companies often set up by former employees of local authority’s.
Kingspan employees openly bragged about panels they provided having inadequate fire resistance stating the foil had passed fire tests but the insulation hadn’t.
Celotex fudged the fire tests.
The architects’ drawings showed cavities that were not fire stopped.
Politicians may make the rules but it’s up to the specifiers, the architects, the manufacturers and all others involved in construction to implement those rules in a safe manner.
Far too many things went wrong with Grenfell. The client should have employed a clerk of works, and the project should never have been design and build.
“Three years after the Grenfell fire many buildings with dangerous cladding still have 24-hour fire safety patrols – introduced originally as a temporary measure. Now, thousands more homeowners are being forced to pay for “waking watches” with no end in sight. “”
They pay people to watch buildings 24 hours a day? ( Fire alarms are pretty cheep)
The moron in charge of the Climate Change Committee who produce all this nonsense is a bloke by the name of Lortd Deben. Better known to many as John Selwyn Gummer, before he got ennobled sic. , late unlamented Ministor for Agriculture who completely screwed up farmers in the Mad Cow disease fiasco 20 years ago ( aided and abetted by Neall Ferguson of Imperial College COVID Hysteria Model Malarkey and presumably another candidate fror a peerage)
The Norwegians had a better name for the man during the earlier Acid Rain planetary doom plague that went away.
Den Drittsekk they called him It means The Shit Bag so thank Lord Drittsekk Deben for this assault on our living standards.
Mind you cockstruck Boris and Carrie of the flatulent Unicorns doubtless have a green hand in the matter too
To prove that beef in the Mad Cow Scare Era was safe,
John Selwyn Gummer got a beefburger and his daughter
on live television and got the daughter to eat the beefburger.
The experiment continues.
But why did he not eat the thing himself,
I ask myself?
Because no one would have noticed if he contracted bovine spongiform encephalopathy
This simply reduces the surplus population and fall right in line with the Great Reset Initiative.
Maybe after prople suffer a lot more they’ll figure out why.
“…or possibly by hydrogen boilers, should the government decide to repurpose the existing gas distribution network for hydrogen.”
Given hydrogen is difficult to contain and the state of the British gas network what could possibly go wrong with this plan?
Hydrogen isn’t simply difficult to contain. Its tiny molecules do, indeed, sneak their way through pipe walls and fittings that contain the much larger natural gas molecules. It also has additional major issues. It “embrittles” metals. Hydrogen Embrittlement makes some ordinarily ductile metals snap like cast iron after containing the hydrogen for some period of time. This makes the “repurposed” gas distribution systems not only much more leaky, it also makes them prone to fracturing catastrophically. Hydrogen also doesn’t liquify at ordinary cryogenic temperatures and pressures. This means that to store it efficiently, it must be stored cryogenically, and at high pressures, too. The high pressure stresses exacerbate the hydrogen embrittlement problem.
Then, the issue is obtaining the hydrogen in the first place. Since reforming fossil fuels would be ruled out as it also makes CO2, and nuclear power is nearly as bad, using solar electricity is the only remaining possibility. (Wind has to be ruled out since it takes more electricity to make the steel and concrete in the wind turbines, than is saved in the current lifetimes of them.) However, there aren’t nearly enough solar panels and transmission lines planned to simply make and distribute the electricity to charge electric cars, so where does the electricity come from to make the hydrogen?
Tom says, “Wind has to be ruled out since it takes more electricity to make the steel and concrete in the wind turbines, than is saved in the current lifetimes of them.)
Really? Then wind must be pricing itself ever further out of existence, as it is a chief component in raising the cost of electricity.
If you have a link to the assertion, it would be appreciated.
Here3 you go: The dangerous winds of trying to prevent climate change – Watts Up With That?
Given the fact much of the gas network still exists from the town gas days, I don’t see a future in a 100% hydrogen gas town supply. I am sure some will make lot sof money out of this next sc@m.
It’s all part of the great reset. Making your home worthless is just the start.
Rather ironic really… the purpose of this to prevent Global Warming by reducing energy use mainly because heating is required to keep warm..!
Great Reset, build back better, new Green deal … we lose our assets, we would be controlled and managed and lose our democracy.
Makes you wonder what universe they operate in.
Impossible standards foe existing buildings
Push disabling “renewables” into the grid, which is already struggling
Mandate EVs to ramp up demand.
You can imagine the Spin Drs in a few years time, “it was a perfect storm of events that derailed our plans”
It was once called Planet Earth, but I’m sure these-F-wits will find a better name for it than what it actually is now – Planet Libtardia.
The good news of course though is that it’s not going to last. Kiddies do grow up.
Either these people are suffering from one of those mass delusions/hysterias that occasionally affects crowds, or these are all just cynical empty-promises.
Or both, possibly.
Link to the 6th report
Link to the report on buildings
This just came into force in France TODAY. New buildings are not allowed to have gas central heating.
Parts of my house are 450 yrs old. I have cast iron window frames. Damp course is short for; its damp of course. I have done everything reasonably practicable to stop the cold winter wind howling through on a calm day. The house will never achieve anything better than F minus. Houses like mine are why England is such a damn fine place to live. I rented a modern house once; mould everywhere due to all the condensation; the official answer in mid winter? = keep the windows open! Horrible house.
If it ever became law, the government would be out of office faster than you could say Nigel Farage.
No idea what UK laws are on takings by regulation but in the US, if my house becomes unsellable by government action it’s a 5th Amendment taking and I am supposed to get government compensation – of course that requires litigation and isn’t easy. But the other side of this is that if government action made my house unsellable, my house’s property value becomes zero (other than the underlying land) so I immediately pursue a certiorari action locally to have my property taxes re-assessed based on a valuation of zero, as does everyone else in my town who cannot sell their homes. This should bankrupt my town. So the implications have been thought out even less here than the article suggests.
Basically, home owners will be buggered.
solid wall German houses of ‘Victorian’ age are routinely insulated
With they exorbitant energy prices caused by the rash decision to go green and ditch nuclear, I’m not surprised
You have never lived in Germany, have you? In fact, you have no knowledge of 20th century history either. How many pre-1945 houses do you think survive as they were originally constructed? Go on. Have a guess, once you’ve read about what happened to Germany between 1939 and 1945.
“by 2030 you will own nothing…and be happy” all makes sense if you look at the so called “Great Reset” plan.
Let’s go back to living like the Turks in the 12th century. No vehicles or planes at all. We live in yurts, ride horses, hunt and fight with swords, shields and bows.We have Obasi’s (Tents) as communities and elect chiefs. All medical needs done by naturalists. Wounds cauterized by hot metal to stop the bleeding. All electronic devises destroyed along with satellites. All current weapons destroyed and planes scrapped. The game begins, just like the idiot kids play in their basements. You either fight or die. Whoever is left standing in 50 years will be elected in congress. Anyone leaders caught lying or cheating is put to death instantly, after a trial of course. Do we miss, “the good ole days” or what!
This is very close to condemning property for failure to meet impossible standards. And the possibility of property being sold for taxes if the fines are imposed.
It is no stretch for the very wealthy to buy up properties on the cheap and prosper. Of course I am only speculating.
Servitude: A charge or burden resting upon one estate for the benefit or advantage of another.
Natural gas pipelines may not be suitable for hydrogen. I seem to recall that hydrogen requires special handling.
“Natural gas pipelines may not be suitable for hydrogen. I seem to recall that hydrogen requires special handling.”
The metallurgy and losses are a bit more complex than that: Hydrogen embrittlement is recognized danger at certain temperatures and within many of the common pipe alloys – That means that the metal itself cannot be used in many cases. (Not all. Hydrogen embrittlement occurs when the pressurized hydrogen atoms carried within the pipeline cause crystalline changes between the steel and carbon matrix of the pipe walls, and cause early failure by cracking at low pressures.) More common is the simple “leakage” of significant pressurized hydrogen atoms as they (literally) simply leak straight between the atoms in the pipe wall to the outside. Losing 1-2% per mile of pressurzed hydrogen pipe means significant losses, and fire/explosion hazards indoor buildings and facilities.
Cryogenic hydrogen transfer is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more complex and expensive and expensive (can you say “rocket fuel handling” without adding a few millions of dollars per launch site?), but at least the pressures are lower.
There are a few misspellings in this presentation, but it outlines a few of the issues technically:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiwvvfasPvtAhURvVkKHa8PA5cQFjACegQIAxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.energy.gov%2Fsites%2Fprod%2Ffiles%2F2014%2F03%2Ff12%2Fhpwgw_embrittlementsteels_sofronis.pdf&usg=AOvVaw246krXNGKiHZGKCMVuhl23
A more general summary is in the article here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452321618302683
Remember: Almost all of today’s natural gas pipelines are now 20-50 years old, running underground underneath many tens of thousands of miles near cities, towns, industries, and homes. They ALREADY have been subjected to decades of vibrations, stress changes, settlement, and corrosion. Now, “they” think sticking pressurized hydrogen into those old pipes is going to be “safe”?
Another hare brained scheme that will fail.
“ should the government decide to repurpose the existing gas distribution network for hydrogen“??!!??
No. If you think the existing piping can pipe Hydrogen, you don’t understand Hydrogen.
I have just spoken with my brother-in-law in the UK. He is an estate agent (real-estate agent in American) and is not overly concerned with this legislation, He told me that Landlords had already had to have their property certificated at “D”, and that hadn’t been a serious problem. He doesn’t see people having to tear out the insides of their homes and putting in vapor barriers and scads more insulation. He says that whatever the Government does will have to be practical. So, there is a view from someone who will be seriously affected by this policy. (I’m never ready to accept that any Government will do what is practical.)
As in America the U.K. has such backward digressed leadership in place it’s capable of any hair brained idea or control measure a deluded Commie can come up with. Time for the purge of this idiocy from public life and influence. Deal also with the Tribal elephant in the room where 1.2% of the population controls 99% of the rest of us in their psycho/socio bubble.
Climate? Lies maybe? Doctored Data, Not U.S. Temperatures, Set a Record This Year James Taylor James Taylor.
EconLog. 1.6%, Not 97%, Agree that Humans are the Main Cause of Global Warming. By David Henderson.
The UK Telegraph in their ClimateGate Series exposed the U of Exeter Climate Scientists, who were tasked with supplying the UN’s IPCC with temperature data.. for having deliberately placed thermometers on rooftops next to hot air con outlets, on black tarmac car parks, in city centers and supplied many readings from Russian locations with NO thermometers.
Making homes unsaleable is a feature, not a bug. The Global Warming movement —and the hysteria over covid—is designed to beggar the middle classes as we have our wealth tied up in our businesses and our homes. The covid lockdowns will bankrupt the businesses, and the new climate rules will make your home worthless. The “elite” will remain untouched.
Building new homes by cutting down trees/pouring concrete to replace all the old homes is considered environmentally friendly?
If you want to use gas, you can use gas-powered heat pump. Including absorption gas heat pumps, or engine gas heat pumps.