Essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, 2 million adults in the UK can’t afford to eat every day. But greens have no problem advocating financial coercion to force people to install a heat pump.
How heating your home fuels climate change – and why government measures are failing to stop it
Published: July 3, 2023 9.15pm AEST
The UK’s housing stock is old, energy inefficient and heavily reliant on fossil fuel heating systems – mainly gas boilers. With heating responsible for 17% of the UK’s carbon emissions, homes and their central heating must transform if the country is to achieve net zero by 2050.
…
Ban the boiler?
Launched in 2022 under Boris Johnson, the boiler upgrade scheme offers homeowners a £5,000 grant to replace their gas boiler with an air-source heat pump (£6,000 for a ground-source heat pump) and aims to lower the cost difference between the two. Installing a new combi-boiler costs between £600 and £2,150 whereas a heat pump is £5,000 to £8,000 after the government subsidy.
The government also plans to implement a clean heat market mechanism that will ask boiler manufacturers to sell four heat pumps for every 100 gas boilers in 2024/25, or pay for the equivalent in heat pump credits if they can’t (one heat pump credit is worth £5,000).
…
Beyond targets for boiler manufacturers, the UK government will ban natural gas boilers in new buildings from 2025. While Germany’s governing coalition is implementing a ban on installing gas boilers in existing properties from 2028.
Before such a ban is tabled in the UK, there are policies that could raise the dismal heat pump installation rate. First, like the Dutch, the UK could gradually lower taxes on residential electricity and increase them on gas.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-heating-your-home-fuels-climate-change-and-why-government-measures-are-failing-to-stop-it-208518
Heat pumps don’t always work out, as the German Green Party learned the hard way. €5 million and counting, and they still haven’t got it right in their party headquarters in Berlin.
There are other big problems with the heat pump and home insulation push.
Britain is a very wet place, a lot of homes are sitting on soil which is always wet. Houses in such places, especially older houses, are built with hollow walls and lots of exterior air vents, so any moisture drawn into the house structure can be vented before it does damage.
If you fill these hollow spaces with insulation, and stop the moisture from being expelled from the house, a lot of bad things can happen, both to the houses and to the occupants. Aside from the obvious problems of living in a dripping damp house, one of the worst case outcomes, the newly installed cavity insulation can wick up so much ground moisture, it swells and causes structural damage, eventually bursting the interior or even the exterior walls of the home.
But the biggest problem, tax or other coercion is not going to force compliance from people who are so poor they cannot afford to eat regularly. All extra taxes will do is add to their misery.
This could all have been so different. Instead of punishing poor people, with one permit the British Government could alleviate Britain’s energy poverty misery.
Britain, especially Lancashire, is sitting on top of a vast reserve of frackable gas. Caudrilla boss Francis Egan has been begging the British Government for over a decade to let him drill, to provide energy security, stimulate manufacturing, and provide cheaper energy and to bring down domestic gas bills. But other than a brief respite under Prime Minister Liz Truss, British politicians have chosen for over a decade to throw poor people overboard, to let ordinary people suffer for the sake of their political climate fantasies.
When has the Guardian ever been on the side of ordinary working Britons? The paper hates them with a passion, and wants them replaced.
The Guardian is the newspaper of the slave owning classes
“…if the country is to achieve net zero by 2050.”
Well that’s easy then, don’t bother with “Net Zero”. So easy.
Heat pumps work great as long as they don’t need to be used.
That’s just not true. Mine works fine.
Look, you don’t want to be forced to install a heat pump, I get it. I’d prefer gas myself, but my home, like many homes in my area (rural central Missouri) uses a heat pump HVAC system. It works.
Please quit claiming heat pumps don’t work.
Heat pumps work fine if the house is specifically designed for them. Unfortunately, most British houses are not suitable for heat pumps. This means that attempting to retrofit them to old British houses will be an expensive disaster.
https://www.phamnews.co.uk/majority-of-uk-homes-not-suitable-for-a-heat-pump-says-report/
I’m not arguing otherwise. Let’s just stop with factually incorrect assertions, like when some people say Covid is just the flu.
Yes, our particular circumstances affect our perceptions. Same is true for EVs and other technologies.
On covid, perhaps because I had acquired some immunity by spending time in China, it was not as bad as a cold, it made me tired with chills for a couple of days.
It’s not my perception. It’s facts.
Fact — heat pumps do work. Fact — Covid is not influenza. None of these are subjective.
The article was about the UK not Missouri
In addition heat pumps will not work in the majority of Canada so I can say HEAT PUMPS DO NOT WORK in Canada
How many previous large influenza incidents had the causative agent identified?
Covid may be no worse than the flu for many people, but it’s not the flu. In fact, the majority of people with Covid don’t know they have it or the symptoms are so mild they think they have a cold.
oops, should have read your response first
Heat pumps only work in climates with mild winters. If the winter temperature routinely gets below 45F (7C), then they are worthless.
In most of New England, the winter temperature is below 45F for months at a time- yet our ignorant state governments are pushing heat pumps.
Then push back, say NO
Too many sheep here who obey the ruling elite. I’m too old (73) to worry about it- I have a new oil furnace and updated my wood stove to EPA standards- so it burns relatively clean.
You need to relieve *your* ignorance on the subject. New heat pump technology introduced in the past decade has heat pumps working down to -5F outside temperature.
But how efficiently? As smoothly as a gas or oil furnace which work fine down- well, as low as it might go, especially here in frigid New England. I’ve seen it down to -20F here in Woke-achusetts. If I had a heat pump, would I freeze?
Outside temperature? Ground temperature in Canada – ground freezes
I am not claiming to be an expert on heat pumps, but I can tell you also that is also JUST NOT TRUE.
https://www.consumerreports.org/heat-pumps/can-heat-pumps-actually-work-in-cold-climates-a4929629430/
Heat pumps no matter the brand are restricted by the 1st law of thermodynamics.
Qin + W = Qout
Qin = available energy outdoors.
W = Work required to move the energy (electricity).
Qout = Energy ‘pumped’ into the space being heated.
As the available outdoor energy (Qin) gets less as the temperature drops the W has to get bigger. This is generally done two ways:
In both cases, you are going to get a big spike in electrical use during cold periods. This was an aggravating factor in the Texas grid collapse when temps dropped into the 20Fs range.
So yes, your heat pump works fine but it is basically turning into the near equivalent of an electric resistant heater when it gets cold enough outside.
Hell,
I’m currently in discussion with our (U.K.) government Department for Energy (In)Security and Net Zero.
They claim that air source heat pumps are 280% efficient. I said that is nonsense because you are using the amount of power consumed by the device, you must use the amount of power that has to be generated as the basis for calculating efficiency.
It is very hard work getting any deviation from their view.
My initial letter to them said that heat pumps will increase CO2 emissions, given what our grid comprises of and that gas does all the balancing which will increase due to the extra demand of heat pumps. (plus all the evs as well)
Here is the USA we refer that as Site (consumed by the device) vs. Source (Energy consumed by the power generator + delivery losses + consumed by the device).
20+ years ago I worked on the New Jersey Standard Offer Program. This was an energy efficiency program with a focus on reducing the need to build new power plants. One of the options was ‘fuel switching’ which paid big incentives to convert from electric to gas. A high-level analysis example of how it would work:
Reduce electric consumption and gas consumption by converting electric hot water boilers to natural gas:
Average natural gas generator efficiency: 50% (at the time in NJ a portions of natural gas fired plants were not combined-cycle but coal plants burning natural gas as an alternative fuel with a lower efficiency than combined cycle).
Transmission Losses: 4%
Misc internal losses (i.e. switch-gear): 1%
Net Source electric boiler efficiency: 45% (natural gas to electricity to heat).
FUEL SWITCH – Near-condensing natural gas fired boiler delivering 160 F water.:
Combustion Efficiency: 86%
Net Efficiency increase: 41% (natural gas to heat.. ignoring extra energy to get it from the pipeline to the site).
What is being done now with “electrification” is insane. Source efficiencies are ignored with the idea that all future power is going to come from wind, solar PV, unicorn farts, and pixie dust. Therefore, why bother with calculating source energy?
At low external temperatures, would it not be more efficient simply to use the electrical energy to heat the interior air directly?
“Efficiency” normally isn’t the issue but install cost / practicality, reliability, and capacity.
My last employer was all in on the electrification bandwagon. The calculations I was doing were for these massive air-sourced units to replace ConEd steam, which I had no faith in actually working**. There wasn’t anywhere to even mount these units (NYC, Manhattan, not a lot of space available), the building switch gear would need a full upgrade, and ConEd couldn’t even supply the power. A total shit-show in the making.
**I spec’d electric boilers as peaking / backup as a CYA maneuver on my part.
You keep using those words. I do not think it means what you think it means. Consumer Reports has some good things, but they are a leftist organization. They also claim EV’s are good, and that ain’t true. When comes to stuff like this, you cannot trust them. HEAT PUMPS DO NOT WORK IN COLD CLIMATES, period. Full stop. No exception. No hand-waving can make it true.
I have a 15 SEER heat pump. Below 45F, it is worthless. I know what I am talking about because I actually have to live with one. Below 45F, it struggles and runs for a long time. Below 40F, and the inefficient electric elements have to kick in. That jacks up the energy bill. I have learned from experience that 45F is the safe spot. It can work when nights get slightly below that, but never when that is the high for the day.
No matter what you say, it would take leftist math to make heat pumps work in cold climates. Which is to say, math where 2+2=5 and climate models = reality.
They never talk about that part; the electric elements have to kick in to back up the losing efficiency of the H. Pump in cold to freezing temperatures sure it will work down to 0 F, but it can’t keep the house warm by itself thus they are LYING!
If electrical heating works in the local climate, heat pumps with adequate electrical heating elements would work. This says nothing about the cost of keeping warm but perhaps something about the redundancy of a heat pump, not unlike the redundancy of grid powered wind.
Mini split heat pumps are made with efficiency high enough to extract heat from outside air down to -5F. I have an 18K BTU one on my house.
Heat pumps work and shouldn’t be an issue in newer properties, however, many British homes have microbore pipes and associated radiators. This means popping a heat pump in would mean replacing the whole heating system not just the boiler.
And that is unaffordable and unnecessary.
No offense. It sounds like your experience is better than my mother’s. She was talked into a ground water heat pump system by the utility company in Michigan. It was a maintenance nightmare with poor reliability. Fortunately she had backup propane heat.
I’m sure they’re better now than then and different manufactures and technologies are going to perform differently and be more appropriate for the particular locale.
I had a refrigerant based mini split system installed to supplement HVAC on part of an old house I owned in Colorado. It worked fine.
No offense taken. I’m not an advocate of heat pumps. I don’t think they are the best choice for everyone. While it is quite clear that poorly installed heat pump systems are a problem, that does not mean they don’t work. Heat pumps do work.
I had to shut down my Heat Pump for the wintertime because it sucks below 35 F which saved me a lot of $$$ and the home was now comfortable and now I use the swamp cooler for the summer to save more and easy to maintain.
Better home designs that incorporate natural insulation does away with needing heat pumps and even A/C too but most of the world prefer powered equipment over natural designs that would easily cut at least 50% power consumption but eventually people will tire of the unnecessary powered heating and cooling needs of the home……
Heat pumps lose efficiency as it gets colder and cost half the bank account to fix, the natural way is far better cheaper and much easier to maintain.
Under what conditions do the “natural” ways work well? I well recall the natural system of bringing all the domestic animals into the human living quarters during the winter. Would you like living with actual pigs?
Never suggested animals and what is more we know so much more on how to keep homes warm or cold much better than how they did it 200 and more years ago.
Somehow you missed this I had already wrote:
Have you been in solar heated homes, or Bermed homes, or have underground cooling/heating systems that needs only a fan to circulate the air and works well such homes already exist and have been in use for many decades.
They are, are they not, essentially air conditioners (which certainly work) running in reverse? The economics may belong in a different domain.
MSG,
I can accept that heat pumps do work in the U.K. but at a higher cost both capital and running than a gas boiler.
Our technically illiterate government have not the slightest idea what is required from the whole electrical system, from generation to local area (low voltage) network and they compound that by adding evs as well.
Total incompetence.
Did you read the article above? A lot of homes in the UK sit on WET land – no heat.
Older heat pumps were claimed to be able to provide heat down to the outside temperature of 40 degrees F. Newer ones are claimed to provide heat down to 25 degrees F. I was told by a local installer that the system also needs electrical heating elements to prevent the coils from freezing over and the compressor from being destroyed.
Then, of course, additional electrical heating is required when the outside temperature is low enough that the air source energy cannot keep the interior warm. Such electrical heating elements cost a great deal to run. Also, without a highly insulated building, the heat pump without electrical heaters could never keep the interior comfortable when outside temperatures are low.
My limited experience with a heat pump system, one I was informed was one of the better ones on the market (for its time at any rate), is that at any outside temperature where interior heating was required, the rate of heating by the heat pump was markedly slower than a gas central heating system. Air coming out of the system never felt warm, only not exactly cold.
I have also been told by a few other heat pump owners that their experience was also very unsatisfactory. Most eventually replaced their heat pumps with combustion based systems where gas lines were not available, as even 40 years ago the cost of electrical heating was higher than wood, propane, or kerosene.
Do you know how often electrical heating is turned on in your system? At what outside temperature is it engaged? Do you experience comfortably warm air flow from your system without electrical heating engaged?
Heat pumps in proper working order have a defrost cycle. When they determine that they are frosting up, they kick off a defrost cycle. The heat pump switches to cooling mode and turns off the outside fan. This pulls heat from the house to defrost the unit. After about 5 minutes they return to heat mode. I lost two control boards because the heat from the sun damaged them. I have resolved the problem by making a foam heat shield with foam from Home Depot to shield the board from the sun. The unit now works great down to about 32F. When I first set it to heat mode, the first thing it does is run a defrost cycle. If I don’t hear it, I know I need another service call.
I am in Phoenix and have an insulated 2,000 square foot single story house with a 4 ton unit. Max electric bill (all electric house) in the winter is about $150 a month. Max summer bill is about $300 a month.
I am in Paducah, Ky and recently replaced my heat pump with electrical resistance back-up or supplement with a gas furnace. Theoretically heat pumps should be ideal for our area. . Not much difference in capital cost but a large reduction in the wife’s bitching. Well worth it, should have done it years ago.
You could have had a new variable speed, inverter drive heat pump installed. Those can pull heat from below freezing air.
Even if you don’t use it, it will cost you 15-20k to install it
There should be big shaming protests outside these universities promoting this suffering of their poor citizens. All the protests of the dark side seem to work famously.
Maybe twitter storms naming and shaming the Uni and the researchers.
Social media fact checkers would stop that in a millisecond
It’s the cultural Marxists long march through the institutions, dreamed of decades ago by Gramsci – the lefties know they will never get the working classes to revolt, so they are taking over academia and corporate structures by stealth to force the collapse of western capitalist society – very well documented by many credible authors and commentators
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way…
As Winston Churchill used to say– KBO.
er..sorry…thought I had something more to say
Is it not true that the population of the Isles have been largely replaced several times by outsiders?
Fracking is “banned” because the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, then in coalition with the Conservatives, set the tremor limit ridiculously low – 0.5! The recent minor “earthquake” that shook houses was measured as 3.5, and it is a logarithmic scale. So that which is regarded as normal for this country is vastly worse than might be allowed for fracking – never mind the benefits of the gas so produced.
And the Tories have not had the courage to tell Davey how foolish he was, and raise the acceptable limit to something more appropriate for fracking.
So we buy LNG from the USA or the Middle East – to hell with the “balance of payments” – and our economy suffers accordingly!
The current crop of “Tories” in government are either themselves of liberal-left-green persuasion or sufficiently wet to go along with a liberal-left-green agenda. And the backbenchers who don’t fall into either category pretty much all go along with the climate change hysteria narrative anyway (whether as true believers or just to follow Central Office orders is immaterial). Greenery has been as much on the “Tory” agenda as any other party’s, particularly since the days of Cameron. So no surprise that no-one is telling Davey how foolish he was (I’d express it in somewhat stronger terms, personally). Sunak, when up against Truss for the leadership, explicitly agreed with her that fracking be allowed if locals supported it (an important caveat knowing the power of the ecoloon renta-mob), but then of course changed tack completely once he’d weaselled himself into No. 10.
Liz Truss’s approach was right, and would have worked. The economic storm that brought her down was confected by those who replaced her. She needed a bit more spine, but that’s easier said than done in such a wet party. What a pity that the Europeans’ nickname “iron weather vane” turned out to be accurate.
0.5 on the Richter scale.
I believe that is also known as a sneeze.
A fracking earthquake is the same on the Richter scale as dropping a watermelon
Didn’t stop them drilling for geothermal heat
I won´t mention the pseudosciencetist Thomas Malthus or Paul Erlich, but, this is the ideology of antihumanism. Instead I will mention Dr. Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt.
Ravenholt was an epidemiologist by training, he apparently looked on pregnancy as a disease, to be eradicated in the same way one eliminates smallpox or yellow fever. Charming he was not, about the slaves he said: ““American blacks should thank their lucky stars that the institution of slavery did exist in earlier centuries; if not, these American blacks would not exist: their ancestors would have been killed by their black enemies, instead of being sold as slaves.”
Why can´t we just appriciate the boiler upgrade scheme, can´t you “see” just as the institution of slavery was a lucky star the boiler upgrade scheme is just the same.
The boiler upgrade scheme is not “cruel”, “callous”, and “abusive” of human dignity at all. This scheme is “absolutly” not one of many prime targets in the eyes of would-be population controllers….(;)
On the other hand, while many black activists are constantly whining about how awful the US is, none of them are interested in moving back to Africa.
… the whims of the people are a funny size …!!
Or Cuba, or Venezuela, or anywhere else.
Less people is a feature for them.
I have just received an email from Scottish Power, encouraging me to install solar power for my house. It says:
We believe that everyone should have the option to make greener energy choices. So, we’ve been working on ways to make solar more affordable. Discover how our pay monthly option, zero VAT and one of the best export rates could make smart energy more cost effective for your home.
Solar isn’t the only way to build a greener home. An air source heat pump can offer an effective and sustainable heating option. With government grants on offer and zero VAT to pay4, it could cost less than you might think.
Notice all the subsidies that are available to encourage people to install solar power and heat pumps.
Get a guide price for your home in minutes and find out how we can help you switch to solar from only £132.45 per month.
Well, as I am only paying £188.00 a month to Scottish Power for my combined gas and electricity, I don’t find that rate particularly attractive. And that’s after all the subsidies.
Then there’s the small print.
Government funding may vary depending on location. Eligibility criteria may apply. In Scotland there is a grant of £7.5k available (additional £1.5k in rural Scotland).
More subsidies.
Homeowners installing air source heat pumps will pay 0% VAT until 2027, as set out in the UK government’s Spring Statement 2022.
More subsidies. And they’re only guaranteed to last another four years. Who knows what will happen after that.
“If you fill the hollow spaces with insulation and stop moisture from being expelled from the house a lot of bad things can happen”
That is precisely what happened with another Government inspired insulation scheme in the UK in the early 2000s to fill those cavity walls. It caused huge problems for millions of people such that a new scheme to repair the damage had to be introduced. That scheme too had significant problems, often bercause the remediation work was being done by the same firms that had done the initial cavity wall work. There are still something like 4m legal cases ongoing.
As others have said if you build a house specifically with a heat pump in mind it can work well. But retro fitting houses not built in this way is a dumb idea and remember the UK has some of the oldest mass housing stock in the world
Lots of homes with bodged CWI suffered significant black mould damage
So most of the problems are related to that cavity-wall construction! Why not a single thicker wall plus double- or triple-glazing? That’s how we do it here in New Zealand – although where I live in Auckland we never have sub-freezing temperatures and heat pumps work fine.
I don’t know when the heat pump was installed in this 80 year old house (there are two fossil chimneys currently walled in. there is no natural gas in the area.) but as it apparently does not have electrical heating elements, it is useless when it gets cold outside — about 7 months of the year. It a useless complaint, however, as even though heating elements could be installed, I could not pay for the power bill to use them.
Just had my gas boiler serviced – the Engineer told me he used to fit heat pumps a couple of years ago when working for a local council, in council owned properties – in his words ‘they were expensive to install and operate rubbish, noisy in operation, the rads and pipe work had to be significantly upgraded at great cost and unless the property was insulated to a very high, expensive standard, just didn’t work’ – he also said electricity operating costs in winter were sky high
He went back to installing gas boilers – he just confirmed what I already knew from many independent sources
My advice, stay clear of heat pumps
For The Guardian, that’s quite an admission and one that I figured it would carefully downplay considering its chronic alarmism. It also helps to prove that these alternate energy ideas can’t deliver.
I live in southern Australia. On a winter morning, like today’s, the temperature can get down to freezing. It’s currently 17 degrees C in the house and will likely take till early afternoon to come up to 20.
Heat pumps work well unless it’s cold outside.
Mine doesn’t have heating coils but still uses heaps of electricity.
Useless.
I second that experience. This house is made of adobe blocks and has (old) double glazed windows. There is some attic insulation.
Moisture in the house indicates an improper installation. If you seal up a house really tight, you need to install a unit that exchanges the inside and outside air without loss of heat. They have had them for years but probably far too often they are not installed where they are needed. It’s so dry in Arizona that we don’t need them but in a more moist climate they prevent moisture accumulation.
heat-exchangers-balancing-your-homes-heat-air-quality
The problem is the moisture gets into the structure of the house. That’s OK if the moisture level is managed by air vents, but this management protocol breaks down if you fill the hollow cavities with insulation.
I’m sure there is some way you could spend a crazy amount of money to completely insulate the house, say replace the wooden stumps with layers of concrete and waterproofing, seal all exterior surfaces so well water simply can’t get in. But people who are struggling to put food on the table simply don’t have the resources required to do anything like this.
“if the country is to achieve net zero by 2050. ” Here in lies the problem. The goal is a false ideal. Net zero is not necessary. As long as CO2 reduction is part of the climate agenda we will be wasting money and resources.