by Will Jones
Ed Miliband has announced an increase in the ‘boiler tax’, which will add an estimated £100 to the cost of replacing a gas boiler, as he refused to back down from his hated heat pump push. The Telegraph has more.
The Government confirmed on Friday that the current quota for heat pumps sold by boiler manufacturers would rise from 6% to 8% from April 2026. It means for every 92 boilers sold, manufacturers must sell eight heat pumps. If they fall short, companies face a fine of £500 per unsold heat pump.
The fines are passed on to customers in the form of higher prices to cover the losses, leading the policy to be dubbed the ‘boiler tax’.
Figures for the UK’s four biggest boiler manufacturers – Worcester Bosch, Vaillant, Ideal and Baxi – suggest the 8% target is far above current demand, meaning hefty fines are inevitable.
Adrian Waddelove, of the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council, a trade body, said Mr Miliband’s new boiler tax would add about £100 to the price of each appliance.
He said: “This is effectively an additional Net Zero tax before the Chancellor even starts her budget.”
About 1.4 million gas boilers are installed annually, most of them replacing older models in the 25 million homes that use them.
The rate at which they are currently being replaced with heat pumps is so slow that it will take 150 years to complete the change. Just 30,000 were fitted to British homes from January to June this year, compared with Mr Miliband’s target of 600,000 annually by 2028.
Mike Foster, head of the Energy Utilities Alliance, the manufacturers and installers trade body, said of the boiler tax: “We have disagreed with this policy since its inception under the previous government. It imposes additional and unnecessary costs on the consumer when replacing their boiler.
“There are many ways in which the UK can increase the sale of heat pumps, and we will work constructively with the Government to do this, but we cannot accept a policy that punishes those who can’t afford to buy a heat pump, those whose home is not suitable for a heat pump, or those who do not want one.”
Worth reading in full.
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When the temperature falls to 0 C, your heat pump efficiency falls below one (not the advertised four) and you will have NO heating at all as the air heat exchanger freezes solid (photo), so pay the tax and get rid of MIlliband. He is a ignorant carrot, and that is an insult to carrots
I am sick and tired of hearing of heat pump efficiencies being in the several hundreds.
This is a fallacy as no device can be 100% efficient much less 3 to 500 % efficient, basic secondary school physics.
The apparent efficiency is because the wrong calculation is used, namely input power and heat output. This takes no account of the energy input to generate and distribute the electricity that powers the device. If using input power it can only be used as a basis of comparison between different types of electric heating, but not with other forms of heaters, as is usually the case.
Further, strictly speaking, KVA should be used not kilowatts, to account for power factor, which at a nominal 0.8 needs 25% more power than the apparent power consumption, and a time element should also be used.
For outside air temperatures of ~40ºF or higher, and using CCGT for generation, a heat pump can yield more heat per cu ft of natural gas than using a furnace. Heat pumps do have niche where they can provide a benefit.
I disagree in that KVA should NOT be used instead of KW, as KVA can easily be generated with capacitors, although KVA is important for sizing distribution systems.
The problem for the UK is that, with some of the most expensive electricity in the world, not only are these things many times more expensive than gas boilers to buy, they’re also significantly more expensive to run.
No argument from me on that. Heat pumps make the most sense when cooling needs are similar to heating.
As for the UK, I would imagine that the highest demand for heating will occur when there isn’t much wind or solar, so the heating demand will need to be met by burning gas.
Now if only we could figure a way to prevent outside temperatures from ever going below 40. 🙄
My heat pump is about 600% efficient. It provides about 6x the heat energy that I have to put into it as electricity.
It’s in a shed that gets sunlight all day, and which reaches 30C in winter when I use the pump to heat my pool. It effectively uses the heat from sunlight heating my shed to heat my pool.
Almost every other application will get less efficiency, however.
Oh a COP of 6 means the temperature differential between input and output is about 10 degrees C. You must live somewhere quite warm! This is basic thermodynamic engineering, but don’t bother telling Millibrain! Many of the claims made are false or curiously manipulated to make heat pumps look good. They are controlled by the Carnot cycle which is completely understood and proven everywhere. Yours is also manipulated, using a hot source as the input will only work on a nice sunny day! I doubt you go swimming in winter…
I find it hard to believe your shed gets to 30C every day in the winter. You have a very fortunate situation.
KVA is not necessarily energy. There is no energy associated with VARs. That is a fact of physics.
I don’t think that is correct. I would state it as there is no work being done by the apparent power but there is energy as there is heat being generated. That heat is waste.🤷♂️
Heat pump machines are not 100% efficient and that is not really the claim. They are refrigeration machines that remove heat from air or water and discharge it into buildings.
Their efficiency of operation is certainly less than 100% but they can move more heat than they consume under favourable conditions.
A bulldozer is not 100% efficient but it can move considerable amounts of coal, for example and yield more energy than it consumes. Same with mine trucks.
Heat pumps are output rated using their heat output a +10C outside temperature. At their rated low temperature they have no energy gain. It is a straight line relationship, generally.
Most would still have some heat gain at 0C, about half of rated.
You are correct in saying that they should only be compared to ordinary electric heat. In the big picture, comparing to gas, generation and transmission have to be considered. Heat pumps are insane where gas is available, IMHO.
KVA is useful for calculating instantaneous power. It is less useful for expressing average power.
The modern inverter based heat pump will have a power factor very close to one. There are common circuits in use now called Power Factor Correction circuits, they work by only taking current from the supply in accordance to the phase and amplitude of the voltage. By definition, their PF will be very close to one.
This link explains how they are implemented. The chips that control this feature are now very low cost and are simple to implement.
https://www.monolithicpower.com/en/learning/resources/power-factor-correction
This technology can be used for all devices that have a brushless motor in their operation, basically anything that says ‘inverter’ in their sales pitch.
With regard to the efficiency being above 100%. This is a measure of the usable power, (heat in this case), delivered compared to the electrical energy that is consumed. It obviously ignores the heat removed from the ambient air.
A modern heat pump unit will get near to 400% efficiency using these measures. I do not believe that the system is using false statements or deceit in making these statements it’s not like we are concerned about chilling the air. Unless it is near to a weather station or something else relying on the air being warm so that grants can be paid out.
you must be welsh speaking.
The welsh word for carrot is MORON!
8 boilers x £500 fine each is £4,000, for selling zero heat pumps.
£4,000/100 boilers is an additional £40 per boiler to recover the fine.
“an additional £40 per boiler to recover the fine”. True, but then there are the admin and enforcement costs. £100 per boiler seems about right.
Anyway, I was unhappily forced to install a new gas boiler two weeks ago as the old one died at the age of 21. I’m much happier now I know that I’ve missed Ed’s tax. The new boiler should see me out, then it’s someone else’s problem.
I knew Miliband was trouble a long time ago, a total zealot.
He will sacrifice us all in the name of his religion. A one man [UK] Hamas.
The added cost of the tax is not the problem. The problem is the whole concept. Miliband’s aim is to get the country on to heat pumps for heating and EVs for transport. This will raise peak demand from the current 47GW or so to somewhere north of 60GW.
That is demand. Now look at supply. He proposes 90GW of wind and 45GW of solar, and this is supposed to make up 95% of supply in 2030. If me manages to get it installed most Januaries you will then have at least a week of less than 10% of faceplate from wind. That means under 10GW, and for a few days within the week it will be under 5GW.
You can verify these assertions by looking at www,gridwatch.co.uk/wind. At the moment the UK has about 30GW of wind installed. Take a look at the charts. Often you have days when it goes below 0.5GW, and long periods of under 5GW occur a couple of times a year.
In these latitudes solar produces almost nothing in the winter months, and what it does produce is sharply peaked in midday, whereas peak demand is in the late afternoon-evening.
There is no way this can be made to work. There is going to be a shortfall of tens of GW. It is inevitably going to lead to nationwide blackouts. And once there is a blackout, there will not be enough spinning reserve to restart. We are talking weeks to get power back.
At the moment the thing that is keeping the UK going is the gas plant which is reaching end of life, and a little nuclear, which is also reaching end of life and which EDF is trying to get agreement to close down. Come 2030 there is just no way, on current plans, the country will have enough reliable power to run the nationwide power grid.
Even without converting everyone to heat pumps and EVs it cannot be made to work. But to raise demand by the conversion program at the same time as you cut off reliable supply is little short of insanity.
This is starting to dawn on people in the UK, and their response is little short of mad. Its to install smart meters and to vary the price of power according to the shifts in the weather. Every half hour!
What cannot work will not work. It is an obvious disaster on the way. Nongqawuse where are you now we really need you?
Typo Alert: www,gridwatch… should be: http://www.gridwatch...
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Yes, sorry about that.
He won’t be there much longer, neither will the Labour party/
Unfortunately, the current government doesn’t need to call an election before 2029.
Failure to pass a budget will bring a government down. Reeves is currently packing on so much unpopular rubbish that even a three line whip will have trouble getting the entirety of labour to support it.
They will pass a budget. Because Starmer will force through whatever concessions to the left are necessary to get one through. The only thing that matters to them is staying in office, and given the current polls this gives the left a veto. The line is: make the concessions or we will cause a general election.
You may think this would be so self destructive that the left would never carry through on it and so the threat will have no credibility. You would be wrong. This is the wing of the party that thinks Corbyn lost because he was not left wing enough.
The key thing to watch at the moment in UK politics is whether local elections, due in May, are “postponed” for a second time. Let them go ahead, and risk a Reform landslide. Postpone, for the second time….? Very tempting. That, along with the ongoing cascade of free speech cases, will be a marker for the future of UK democracy. As some wise comment had it: you can vote the left in, but you won’t be able to vote it out.
As the residents of the following places have found out:
Who knows, maybe the local government reorganization will mean more areas have postponed local elections. Then there will be a national emergency leading to the postponement of national elections in 2029. Could be due to a nationwide power failure, for instance….
Nov. 5 approaches. It is time to gather pitchforks, material for torches and thick hemp rope.
I thought it was gunpowder?
No need for gunpowder. We can use Ukrainian drones to track down Mad Ed.
As a Yank, I’ve always liked the poem “Remember, remember the 5th 0f November…” It always reminds me of 1776..Don’t forget your gunpowder.
Heat pumps are great! We have one as do all of our neighbors. We call them Air Conditioners, and they keep our houses cool in the summer.
Running these things “backwards” to heat a house in the winter works but they don’t “heat” — they warm. And they’re noisy because the volume of heated air required is large and big fans make big unpleasant sounds as they try to push tons of warm air through the system.
Our winters often include days and nights of real cold — temps below ten degrees F and occasionally below zero degrees F — when there is not enough “heat” in the atmosphere to heat a house using a heat pump. Then the system switches to resistance heat — very warm but very expensive compared to gas or oil.
Imagine planning the electrical load from heating systems based on heat pumps.
At 20C, no heating is required, so zero demand.
At 10C, heating is running and the systems are around 300% efficient.
At 0C, heating is required, twice as much as at 10C but the electrical demand is now almost exclusively resistive. So in effect it will be 100% efficient with twice as much usable heat required. Which is 6x the electrical load at 10C.
I wonder if the brains trust who are forcing these installations know what they are doing to the grid demand in cold weather. It’s not a linear increase, like it would be for gas.
Then again, the plan is for the masses to own nothing and the elites will be happy. Warmth and comfort are just another asset.
Central heating was traditionally by heating water and pumping it around the building. Using cheap hydrocarbon fuels, this made some kind of sense.
but trying the same trick with a heat pump seems bonkers to me. I live in NE Scotland in a solid walled cottage built around 1850. Where we routinely have weeks at a time of very low (< -5°C). Indeed only four years ago the ground was snow and/or frost covered for 6 weeks. Methinks a heat pump ain’t gonna work , even assuming I spent a small fortune to rebuild the interior of the house to cope with the additional insulation, radiator and pipe sizes etc.
why do we not go for IR panel heaters – a fraction of the cost and heat where and when required?
With a solid-walled cottage, insulation is best on the outside so the masonry acts as a storage heater ( also, it’s less disruptive, room sizes are not reduced & no internal decorating ). A cascade heat pump will give higher temperatures that will run std rads; ground & water to water are the most efficient.
In UK, high humidity will soon clog an air-source heat-pump with ice, so electric heaters are used to melt it … lowering the efficiency.
Heat pumps don’t work in a blackout !!! You can run a gas CH system via battery& inverter.
Yet more worthless crappy government. Yet more mandates, does anyone know of a mandate that is worthwhile? The Brits need to get off their backside and deal with these useless bureaucrats and administrators, they are killing you.