From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
The head of the climate watchdog behind the planned boiler ban has admitted that he still has gas heating in his own home.
More than four years after claiming he was “keen” to convert to electric heating in his flat, Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, said he still has a gas boiler.
“I wish I didn’t,” added Mr Stark.
The Committee on Climate Change lobbied the Government to bring in a ban on the installation of gas boilers in new homes from 2025, with the sale of new gas boilers banned altogether from 2035 as a result of the committee’s recommendations.
The committee and Government hope that electric heat pumps can be installed instead in many homes.
Questioned by MPs about how the 2035 target could be met when heat pumps remain unaffordable for most people, Mr Stark admitted that he still had a gas boiler in his Glasgow flat.
He warned that the cost of heat pumps remained too high and said it was “very difficult” to install heat pumps in existing flats like his.
Appearing before the House of Commons environmental audit committee last month, Mr Stark said: “The capital cost of it is too high at the moment.
“It can be brought down, but that will not happen unless there is scale installation and scale production. That is one of the biggest barriers. There is not an installer community for heat pumps at the moment.”
He went on: “I have a gas boiler. I wish I didn’t, but I live in a flat and heat pumps are a very difficult thing to put in there.”
Mr Stark said his own boiler engineer was sceptical about the application of heat pumps.
“The gas boiler guy who comes round and fixes my gas boiler – it breaks very often – tells me they will never work,” he said.
“That is a problem – and he knows what I do. If we do not have an installer community out there selling the benefits of this, and if we do not have support for it to bring down the capital cost so that we see the benefits in their use – there are widespread benefits, there is a huge system benefit to using them as well – then it won’t work.”
Mr Stark also suggested that the Government should consider tax incentives to make running heat pumps more affordable.
“The one policy that would make this really sing is to have cheaper electricity,” he said.
“In the round, we should be moving to a world where we are producing all this very cheap low-carbon electricity, but the consumer is not yet seeing the benefit of that.
“You can put a penalty in place and you can remove that penalty with the tax system, so there are tools at the disposal of the Treasury to try to skew this move towards electrified heat, which will make heat pumps themselves much cheaper to use and run.”
In recent weeks, the Government has faced calls from some Conservative MPs to slow down aspects of the transition to net zero, including the 2025 boiler ban in new homes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/12/heat-pumps-chris-stark-campaign-uses-gas-boiler-himself/
The hypocrisy of the man is astonishing!
If it is “difficult” to install heat pumps in his flat, what about all the other millions of homes which are in a similar position?
And maybe he should be taking the advice of his own boiler engineer who says heat pumps are not a solution.
Stark still thinks the answer is to use taxpayers’ money to subsidise their own heat pumps! In any event we already know that £5000 subsidies have had little effect on heat pump sales.
And cheaper electricity? Does he not know that electricity is so expensive because the high cost of renewable energy?
Perhaps Chris Stark should go on a course to teach him joined up thinking!
Ironically I asked the CCC a few weeks ago to give me a list of board members who have heat pumps. They told me they do not hold the information.
I therefore call on them now to formally request that each member voluntarily provide this information.
The one thing you can absolutely guarantee from any of the climate glitterati…
… is TOTAL HYPOCRISY !
Do as I say not as I do.
All progressives are the same.
Chris Stark keeps his gas fired boiler, you get to freeze in the dark.
He’s no different to Gates, Kerry, Schwab, Gore, King Charles etc etc etc – the same old elites demanding you regress your living standards, whilst they eat, heat, fly, drive, beach front live etc
They can tell we are simple folk, who are happy to ride the bus to the beach instead of drive our car. And if they want their own beach, well… they own the buses…
“so that we see the benefits in their use – there are widespread benefits, there is a huge system benefit to using them as well”.
I notice that he doesn’t specify what the benefits of heat pumps actually are. I can’t name any either.
“very cheap low-carbon electricity”.
This shows that he is either a liar or delusional.
They don’t make very good anchors either when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
But Nick keeps reminding us that wind is free…
So are wind droughts 🙂
Coal is free. Nature doesn’t charge a cent to harvest all you can find. And there are hundreds of years of proven reserves.
very cheap low carbon electricity = oxymoron.
Person who states the above = moron.
There are none in the UK, except if you are conning people to buy them
If he was truthful he would admit that what his boiler engineer told him was true. But like Lord Deben ex chair of the CCC he has been telling lies for so long he no longer knows what the truth is.
But he’s made a few bob by it, 600,000 bobs to be precise
He really means offering bad advice to the point of dishonesty.
Actually Australia is reasonably well suited to heat pumps but when I looked a few years back, the performance of locally made units was terrible.
This article prompted me to look at recent reviews on the ProductReview site. The Enviroheat unit made by Haiar gets a rating of 4.4 on product review out of 48 reviews. 31 reviewers gave 5-star. This is quite impressive.
https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/enviroheat-heat-pump-water-heater
It might be time to do the sums. Frosts are rare where I live in Melbourne, Australia. The overnight minimum for the last two days of 3C is the lowest this year. Day times have got up to 14C and we are looking forward to high teens later in the week.
Not bad for the heighth of winter.
I live in Arizona we see 3 c once or twice a winter, even with that my furnace which is a heat pump has to go to inductive hating far more often that that. The reason cold dry air has very little heat in it. When I switched from inductive only heating to a heat pump/inductive heating my electric usage went up not down. Now try to tell me how efficient a heat pump is!
I am in phoenix and have a heat pump. It’s a 4 ton unit on a 2000 square foot house built in 2007. The heat pump works reasonably well and my heating cost are less than my mothers with gas heat in a smaller house. No Gas or electric backup for the heat pump and as long as the defrost cycle works, I am comfortable.
Would I recommend it for a climate less mild? No unless you have some type of backup for colder days. All electric house and a max power bill of around $150 in the winter. Cooling bill is around $300 in the summer. Between those extremes the bill is around $110.
Ewww, yuck!
We’ve got below freezing a couple of times this winter, but at least the maxima have been in the high teens or low twenties most days. The maxima have been in the mid teens on the few rainy days, but they have minima around 10.
Keep in mind that if you are currently heating with gas, your heating costs, aside from the cost of a new system itself, will go up by a factor of 5.
Forgetting that they don’t work in many cases for a minute, we still haven’t been told where all the extra electrons needed to power them will be coming from.
If an average household could require ~7KW to power their heat pump, that’s effectively doubling domestic consumption and that’s before we factor in charging for all the electric cars we are being asked to change to.
I wonder how long it will take before those in charge will start to see that their plans are impossible to deliver.
“I wonder how long it will take before those in charge will start to see that their plans are impossible to deliver.”
I think we are getting closer to that point. German politicians seem to be trying to wake up from their drunken, climat alarmist stupor. Some UK politiicans are getting nervous. And lots of consumers are complaining about their energy bills.
The UK has about 450,000 kms of Low Voltage networks about 80% of which is built for ‘lighting plus’ and not the loads necessary to support EV or heat pump use. It has been estimated that upgrading this network would cost £60 bn and involve digging up most of the non motorway roads in the country. (note, that estimate is now several years old)
https://v2g.co.uk/2021/05/electric-vehicles-as-energy-smart-appliances/
I’ll keep saying this: Don’t install a heat pump.You’ll regret it. I did and it’s probably the most stupid decision I have ever made.
The more people who contact this stupid government to tell them to stop this madness, perhaps it will eventually sink into their stupid heads that gas boilers are the best choice and heat pumps the worst.
John C.,
It would help if we knew the circumstances of your dwelling and where in the world you are.
I’ve had an AC/HeatPump (+ a wood stove with my own on-site wood) for 20 years.
In Central Washington State, electricity is not expensive, summers are hot, winters cold. The house is wood frame, well insulated, and was built with ducts throughout.
Since the Brits initiated this idea a few years ago, Paul H. has been reporting on it. It appears most places in the UK are not able to match the characteristics of my free-standing house. This should eliminate them from considering a heat pump.
UK has some of the oldest housing stock in the world, a large percentage of which is unsuitable for heat pumps without considerable expense over and above the cost of the heat pump itself.
There is a reason why over 22m of the 28m houses in the UK are
connected to the gas grid.
Meanwhile, in mild northern New Zealand, where we rarely experience a frost, heat pumps are entirely practical and economical. As John H. mentions below, comments have little value unless given with reference to the location. Our looming problem here is the advocacy by those with no technical knowledge that we should all be buying those overpriced fire-prone Electric Vehicles. I’ll be staying with my 2 ICE cars – little danger of fuel-shortage for those!
I added a heat pump to my natural gas fired central system so we could get A/C during the hotter days. It’s currently 94 F outside at my house. 72 F inside. When it’s below 40 F outside, the heat pump goes idle and the furnce takes over.
If it never gets hot where you live, then don’t bother with a heat pump.
The heat pump gives up at only 40F? What’s that, 4-5°C? What do I do when winter here in relatively mild southern Ontario is -10 to -20 °C?
I’d also like to know how many MP’s and ministers have heat pumps.
Er none, if they did, they would just be a taxpayer funded PR exercise, in their taxpayer funded second home
This sounds so much like the historic Soviet Union it isn’t funny. Yugo’s for you, Mercedes for me. Bread delivered to me first, you get what I don’t need. Party officials determining what will be done utilizing 5 year plans.
I guess there really is nothing new under the sun, especially when you don’t learn from history.
Putey Putin has Russia back in the USSR….what’s new?
Heat pumps may work to some degree in Scandinavia, with their better designed for cold, insulated homes, but they will not work in the UKs climate and housing stock
They are far more expensive and less efficient than gas boilers, your rads & pipework will need upgrading (more cost), when air temp falls below 5degC efficiency really drops off as they struggle to keep your home around 18degC internally whilst running 24/7, at current electricity rates they are very expensive to operate, they are noisy in their 24/7 operation, there is an increased risk of legionnaires disease from the cooler system water aerosols (which a gas boiler at 60degC will kill)
The increased electrical load (inc your battery car) will require upgrade of not only domestic supplies, but also grid distribution networks, which has significant further cost and time scales
Anyone who understands thermodynamics, electrical engineering or economics, understands there is no sensible case for these in the UK – The politicians who are peddling these to the masses (and that covers all 3 main UK political parties) won’t be having them, unless they are for PR nonsense, funded by taxpayers, in taxpayer funded second homes
People buying new homes with heat pumps fitted are removing them and having gas boilers fitted
My advice, avoid like the plague, same as battery cars and smart meters
According to my increasingly frantic electricity supplier (EDF – hardly a week goes by without a request from them to make an appointment to have a smart meter fitted), by not having one I’m missing out on an ‘essential upgrade’. Essential to whom, I wonder – certainly not me.
“They” ( Scottish Power ) keep telling me my meter is old ( 24 years ) and needs to be replaced ‘cos it might become dangerous. My electrician tells me that is rubbish, it will last for ages, and the guy who reads my meter every 3 months tells me that he will not allow a smart meter in his house. ( I suppose he would say that though ‘cos smart meters would put him out of a job. )
The Scandavians keep insisting this is so but without any numbers we don’t know.
The significant numbers we need from them (which we never get so they are patently exaggerating something) is the overall (across a full 12 months)
All heat pumps will have, and do, built into them a huge fuggoff ‘immersion’ heating element for when the actual heat pumping part is struggling
So what we want to know from Scandavia is how often and to what extent does that happen.
If you’re hiding that number or not even aware of it, then:
Of course heat pumps work
The Killer for an air source pump would humidity – NOT input or output temperature
In the UK, especially the western side e.g. Glasgow that would be the real killer for them especially in conjunction with typical/average UK winter temps
(Between zero and about ten Celsius)
The air source pump is required to cool the air and if it’s coming into it at those temperatures AND is full of moisture – the moisture will freeze on the heat collector and jam the thing up. If it can’t suck any air it cannot ‘source’ any heat
OK Scandavia is a lot colder than UK in winter but that coldness means that the air is so much drier
So yes – heat pumps in Scandavia might/could/will still function.
But UK has it the worst = damp air at a typical temperature that when you suck heat out of it, the water vapour in there instantly freezes and blocks your machine
That rules out their use on almost all the western side of UK, UNLESS you are very close to the sea = where air temps never get less than 7 or 8 Celsius
The eastern side of UK MAY be OK – because it is naturally so much drier.
“the moisture will freeze on the heat collector and jam the thing up”
First part is true. However, mine — as necessary — melts the ice. No problem.
Yes, that is necessary in many climates but still not available in many older heat pumps.
It melts the ice with an electric element. In other words, it’s no better than electric space heating and adds a large cost for the inefficiency of the heat pump component.
No, all heat pumps do hot have resistance heating elements, no matter how much they may need them. Supposedly heating elements could be fitted into the hat pump in his old house but the house wiring probably would not support them; not would my finances. The heat pump/air conditioner just sits there, unused.
I own one of the tens of millions of American homes with a heat pump. Mine works well until it gets below 20F. But my home was designed for it. HVAC installers around here have decades of experience with heat pumps.
But, lots of America gets way below 20F in the winter, like where I live. A purely heat pump system in my area would mean a lot of cold days in the house. My neighbor has a ground water heat pump, and his very expensive resistance heating is on all the time in the winter.
It’s my understanding that the Brits are referring to air-source heat pumps, not ground-source heat pumps.
We haven’t the space for ground source – far too many pokey little ticky tacky houses crammed into ‘estates’ of at least 4 houses per acre
Just one ground source pumps needs half an acre.
Depending where the water table is. It you’re on really dry free-draining ground you’ll need the whole acre to yourself
4 houses per acre?????
More like 12+.
Well, yes Paul, but it’s only part of the story. Here in the UK most houses have existing water filled radiators, full of 60deg C plus water from gas fired boilers/furnaces, The plan is to replace the boilers with heat pumps heating the water in those radiators – ie not air-air reversible A/C units like those I think are common in the US.
It’s not going to work. Heat pumps don’t get the water hot enough, the cold damp air outside causes the evaporator to get covered in ice, electricity is three times the price of gas so the heat pump has to have a COP of 3 to break even.
And to crown it all, we get half of our electricity from burning gas – & it’s pretty much the only thing that responds to changes in demand. So when (roughly speaking) someone turns on a new heat pump we burn 3kWh of gas to produce 1kWh of electricity to generate 3kWh of heat in their house – when they could have just burnt the 3kWh of gas in their house in the first place! All to no net saving in CO2 emissions.
You would think that a person who believes the earth is in crisis would spare no expense in putting in a new heat pump.
Bureaucrats and politicians don’t actually believe what they are spouting. They just do it to maintain their jobs and status in society. Same as cli-sci’s, members of the Spanish Inquisition, and various whacky cult leaders.
You know nothing of the Spanish Inquisition, especially when to expect it.
Actually, if said person had just a little numerical ability, it would realize the gesture would be futile.
In Mr. Stark’s economic world, mandating a huge increase in heat pump units results in a reduction in unit costs. Demand curves don’t work that way.
I was looking for a comment such as yours. Stark must have skipped that lecture, or he wears thick rose-colored glasses.
The Cimate Clowns Committee has lost all touch with reality. Only a hybrid heat pump with a small gas heater is a practical replacement for the majority of British houses with conventional central heating systems. Otherwise it means increasing the size of radiators or installing underfloor heating – costly and disruptive. The CCC has ruled that this would only be acceptable if the gas component is hydrogen, despite the fact that there is no hydrogen supply and all urban properties already have gas connections!
They live in a fantasy land.
From the perspective of heating, electrical resistance heat has to be the most efficient form available. No heat goes up the chimney, no moving parts, simply a resistance in an element that produces heat. The problem is that the BTUs produced by electrical heat are more expensive than those produced by the combustion of natural gas. Condensing gas boilers are an improvement in efficiency, despite their complexities, making electrical heat a relatively worse economic bargain.
Cooling is another matter. Boilers won’t do it. Modern “split systems”, pioneered in Asia, have been introduced in the West, especially to easily add cooling to existing residential buildings built before cooling became possible or practical. At this time that combination seems to be the most practical and economic answer to home HVAC and likely will be into the future.
You don’t understand transmission losses and the fact when you generate electricity a lot of energy goes up the stack. When it comes to electricity both ends need to be figured into the equation. The most efficient way to heat a home is with a modern gas furnace, most are above 90% efficient. Most of the time you losses in transmission of electricity is more than 10%. That not counting you losses in producing that electricity. As far a zero emission electricity the only system that comes close in nuclear. The only emission nuclear has it the emission it took to produce the materials and fuel. Those are far less than anything else since the fuel has an energy density nothing else can match. Solar and wind are hard pressed to repay their carbon debt in the lifetime of the system because of the lack of energy density.
The issue isn’t “the other end” for a homeowner, it’s his own utility bill. Emissions and energy density don’t mean anything to the fellow sitting on the divan watching football. It costs more to heat a home with electrical resistance heat than a gas boiler. If the desire was to make electricity cheaper things like this wouldn’t occur.
Sure it matters to the home owner. They pay for all of the energy costs. There is nothing free, someone ultimately pays.
When you pay your electrical bill you’re paying for the mining of the coal, its shipment to the power house, the construction and maintenance of that facility, the salaries and benefits of the employees, the construction of the transmission and distribution lines, the easements needed, the maintenance and repair of the system and the astronomical compensation of the executives.
When you pay your gas bill you’re paying for the exploration and development of the oil/gas field, the drilling and extraction of the hydrocarbons, the separation or refining of them, the siting and construction of the pipelines and distribution of the gas, and, once more, the salaries of the employees and executives. It turns out that gas is cheaper.
I think the other commenter/voters misunderstood your post – I upvoted you.
Yes, electrical heat is more ‘efficient’ (conversion of electricity to heat, plus no need for ducts and fan) but yes still more expensive. Efficient doesn’t mean cheaper.
Just another shoot – ready – aim from the alarmist crowd. To them, the end justifies the means even if the means aren’t viable.
In the 1950s and 1960s, before I was even born, politicians and what would now be called “SPADs” (special advisors) in Britain were touting a new “low-carbon” technology that would … definitely, absolutely guaranteed, honest guv’nor … result in “electricity too cheap to meter”.
It didn’t happen.
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, anyone over 40 who isn’t extremely cynical about politicians (and/or their acolytes) “promising” very cheap [ insert desirable thing here ] doesn’t have a brain.
Excellent. My favourite Churchillism is what he said about prospective Parliamentary candidates: They are asked to stand; they hope to sit; and they are expected to lie.
Well, there is the Stark-Truth about heat pumps, and then there is the stark truth about heat pumps.
A 5000 pound subsidie and your taxes go up 5000 pounds. What a bargain.
If heat pumps are so low cost to run they would already have taken over the air conditioner market. With cheap air conditioning global warming is not a problem.
Chris Stark classified by The Telegraph as a “climate watchdog” per its website excerpt given at the top of the above article . . . well, they almost had it right . . . barking fool would be much more accurate.
This Stark dude needs to have his gas line taken out permanently
Heat pumps are stark, staring bonkers.
These idiots really think that necessity is the mother of invention, that if they just destroy our nuclear and fossil energy industries, then inexpensive wind and solar “green” energy substitutes will magically appear.
No, it is possibility that is the mother of invention. Necessity prompts us to look for possibility, but the possibilities for wind and solar have already been intensively mapped out, for decades now, and they are garbage.
They are inherently intermittent, which means they don’t reduce base-load/ dispatchable electricity generation requirements one iota. Maybe someday, when battery or supercapacitor technology is able to store vast amounts of intermittent power, this will no longer be the case, but that too has been explored extensively and remains as pie-in-the-sky as fusion power.
All for an entirely fake “emergency.” What warming has occurred since the bottom of the Little Ice Age 300+ years ago has been almost entirely natural, and all to the good. We will be lucky if it continues, but the real evidence says that it was caused by the high level of solar activity since 1700, which is likely to fall off, and create cooling.
Unlike warming, cooling really is dangerous, and really does feedback on itself in accelerating fashion, regularly hurling the planet into 100,000 yr long glaciations. The only actual climate danger always has been and always will be global cooling.
Meanwhile CO2, the beginning of the food chain for all life on earth, has fallen 90% over the last 170million years, all the way to deep semi-starvation levels during recent interglacials. The planet’s biosphere has been shrinking.
It is very possible that life on earth was heading toward serious constriction, even extinction, until man came along and only 70 years ago started releasing enough trapped CO2 to start re-fertilizing the planet, and the eco-morons want to stop it, while CO2 is still at semi-starvation level, and with the next glaciation due any millennium now.
Lies and fantasies are how these people try to mask their true character: that they are creatures of totalitarian ambition, fundamentally disinterested in truth. They don’t care if civilization is reduced to ashes, so long as they sit atop the trash heap.
They actually hate humanity, and are perfectly explicit about it. They think we are the problem, and that the planet would be better off without us.
They couldn’t be more wrong. If we fail — if the eco-communists succeed in reducing mankind to a pre-modern state, as they are very much trying to do, and we go into the next glaciation with a return to primitivism — then Planet Earth most likely becomes a spent ovum.
We have already consumed the albumen: the energy resources that are readily available to a low-tech civilization. Those resources allowed us to reach the point where we can access Earth’s nearly unlimited fissionable resources, a path that a subsequent energy-poor attempt at modernization may well not be able to follow.
An ovum typically gets one shot to give rise to a thriving entity that is able to step out into the world beyond, and that is the likely situation for humanity and our planet. We are the one shot, and these stinking humanity haters are trying to destroy us.
They need to be sidelined. The sane, rational, and moral people better get back in control soon, or jackasses may succeed in aborting our species and our planet.
Is there any way we can disconnect (accidentely of course) Chris Stark’s gas supply?
In February.
The people pushing climate alarmism should be forced to live by their words on their own dime, no help from us ordinary/regular guys.
A while back a co-worker received an accidental stray e-mail from local fire marshal … ‘ great news, looks like sprinklers in new construction will be State code soon’.
Co-worker e-mails back, telling him it is bad news, uneconomical, and unfair. They go back and forth for a while, trying to convince one another. Eventually the bureaucrat/advocate starts to get a irritated starts to fib about the issue/costs/benefits … so’s I suggest co-worker simply ask the fire-marshal:
“Instead of guesses about retrofit costs, why don’t you just pull out your old receipts and tell me how much it cost you, when you retro-fit your house to add the fire-sprinklers? Seems like that would give us a real-world starting basis.”
The e-mails stopped. No further responses. Didn’t even need to ask about protecting his parents, & how much that had cost.
Don,
Just adding this for the record – not that I think you’re arguing any differently:
I am currently a firefighter and used to work in the fire sprinkler industry.
One part of what you said caught my attention: “starts to fib about the issue/costs/benefits” I can say with absolute certainty that fire sprinklers are a VERY good idea and that in my opinion every building should have them, especially houses. Also, they are MUCH cheaper to install during initial construction than as a retrofit, by a large margin.
That said, even though I think everyone SHOULD have them, I am strongly against mandating them. I DO think that they should be an option (offered by builders, not forced to do so by the state) during new construction, and that buyers should be made aware of their benefits.
And no, I don’t have them in my house, much as I would like to, due to the cost of retrofit. THAT is prohibitive for pretty much anyone, unfortunately.