For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Your engineer is exactly right, its amazes me the nonsense that is spouted about these heat exchangers. Unless technology develops significantly I doubt they will be installed in 5% of homes.
The new policy will seemingly make little difference...
"But the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps"
French Covid vaccine abandoned by UK found to be more effective than AstraZeneca jab
Lead investigator left asking why a contract for the Valneva jab was cancelled before further testing and trial data could be reviewed
It could be politically embarrassing as well. Boris visited the site, we ordered 100 million doses then cancelled the contract. Why? And have ministers been straightforward? A couple of extracts from the Telegraph:-
Valneva said on Monday that its phase three results – which included more than 4,000 people across 26 sites in the UK – show it produces roughly 40 per cent more neutralising antibodies than the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab. ... Mr Javid, speaking in the House of Commons, added: “It was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval by the MHRA here in the UK.” ... However, Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and lead investigator of the Valneva trial, said the reason for these comments remains a mystery.
“We don’t really know why he said that. It has been corrected in Hansards, so he has acknowledged that he got it wrong, but he hasn't actually explained, to me at least, exactly what led to that comment.”
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
There's a world of economic hurt coming and the Tories should take a hit for that.
One theory I've heard spouted, May 2023 GE which allows the Tories to put up taxes in late 2023 and not have to face the electorate for nearly five years.
That won't look like such a good idea by 2022.
Maybe, I suspect the earlier he goes to the country he can keep the Brexit coalition together as he will say voting Labour risks ruining/overturning Brexit .
What worries me (much to my surprise) is how the numbers have shifted on that in the last two months, including eating into that coalition.
It might not stay solid forever or, if it does, shrink down from 45-50% to an irreducible core of true believers at sub 30% at which point it becomes a handicap not an asset.
Yes, Labour is holding onto Remainers well, and gaining Leavers with buyers remorse. Not enough yet, but if the dam breaks...
SKS needs to be careful or he may get it wrong on Brexit a second time by overcompensating.
If that does happen the risk is it goes to their heads and their hand is massively overplayed.
A very good politician would recognise Britain is divided and come up with a long-term compromise that 70%+ could be satisfied with.
The sensible option for rejoiners is to press Labour to commit the UK to join EFTA. Which they could sell as part of their 'Make Brexit Work' stance.
So you want to see Labour commit to following EU rules and having free movement again?
And who do you think will vote for that and why? What will be gained from that?
EFTA does not mean either free movement (sadly) nor following EU rules. Freedom of movement only comes in if you take the further step of joining the EEA and neither involve following EU rules any more than we have to now.
Oh and I would vote for EFTA like a shot.
The EFTA agreement - IIRC - contains provisions for free movement between Lietchenstein - Iceland - Norway - Switzerland. (But does not, IIRC, contain the same provisions Maastricht did around treating foreigners as if they were citizens, which therefore made them eligible for benefits.)
As we have seem, the problem isn't benefits but the way open borders to the EU is a massive downwards drag on wages.
Yet the EFTA countries are all high-wage economies…
The EFTA countries don't have the UKs welfare state.
That someone can move to the UK, get a minimum wage job then immediately get housing allowance, tax credits or universal credit, child benefits etc isn't necessarily the same as in other nations.
But isn’t the difference between EFTA and the EU, as posted up thread is that EFTA countries aren’t obliged to extend eelfare benefits to free movement immigrants, whereas EU members are?
It would seem that EEA membership through EFTA could be the sweet spot, and ISTR that was exactly what leavers said they were aiming for during the referendum campaign.
Suggestive differences between Scottish and English school-age rates from the ONS survey/modelling. Scotland peaked in early September at just under 8% estimated positivity rate. England is yet to peak.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Your engineer is exactly right, its amazes me the nonsense that is spouted about these heat exchangers. Unless technology develops significantly I doubt they will be installed in 5% of homes.
The new policy will seemingly make little difference...
"But the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps"
The other thing to remember is that on a cold winters day if your only heating is via a ASHP then your house will be cold. They do not work anything like a standard central heating system. You will not be able to dry your towels on your radiators as they will only be lukewarm.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
That's why the "Fabric First" approach is absolutely critical.
Were the government to fund the whole thing, money-grubbers would just jump blindly on the bandwagon. That needs to be avoided at all costs.
I would do something like grants limited to EPC level C and above.
I would means test them as I just see this as handing the wealthy a cash grant they do not need
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
The subsisdy is simply a benefit to the wealthy. Who can mostly afford it.
The activists are fanatics. You cannot appease them.
What good would banning Combi boilers do without a fully working, scalable, alternative.
People still need to heat their homes. We have to be realistic there are millions and millions of gas boilers in the country and changing them all out is going to take years.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
It’s going to be the single biggest problem for the government in the coming years.
If anything gets the PM in the next 12 months, it’s going to be listening too much to his wife and not enough to his backbenchers on the subject.
Gas boilers to heat pumps. If the £5,000 subsidy starts in April, hasn't the government just killed the market for the next six months, or am I missing something obvious?
I have no problem with heat exchangers being phased in gradually. Presumably they will become more cost effective if gas prices continue to rise but do they work. Will they provide sufficient heat and hot water in the middle of a cold winter? Does anyone on here have experience of them? Sorry if these points have already been covered.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
That's why the "Fabric First" approach is absolutely critical.
Were the government to fund the whole thing, money-grubbers would just jump blindly on the bandwagon. That needs to be avoided at all costs.
I would do something like grants limited to EPC level C and above.
You will never stop money grabbers though. Cameron’s green new deal, or whatever it was called, just enriched middle men and saddled many people with debt and higher bills. People are sceptical of green new deals and rightly so. They are always announced with great fanfare they are going to achieve a great deal,and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. They never do.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
We had a very similar experience when our boiler had it's annual service last month.
Gas boilers to heat pumps. If the £5,000 subsidy starts in April, hasn't the government just killed the market for the next six months, or am I missing something obvious?
I would expect the market for heat pumps is fairly small and if the wealthy have to wait until April to receive their £5,000 then so be it but I do hope HMG are alert to this being seen as a gift to the wealthy
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
The subsisdy is simply a benefit to the wealthy. Who can mostly afford it.
The activists are fanatics. You cannot appease them.
What good would banning Combi boilers do without a fully working, scalable, alternative.
People still need to heat their homes. We have to be realistic there are millions and millions of gas boilers in the country and changing them all out is going to take years.
I'm getting a bit miffed at all this misleading reporting about new gas boilers being banned. This is false. What will be banned is new boilers that are not 'hydrogen ready', ie all new boilers must be capable of running on hydrogen when the network is converted from natural gas to hydrogen. The majority of homes with a gas boiler will carry on having a gas boiler. It's just that the fuel will be different.
My advice to anyone thinking of switching from gas central heating to a heat pump: Don't!
I have no problem with heat exchangers being phased in gradually. Presumably they will become more cost effective if gas prices continue to rise but do they work. Will they provide sufficient heat and hot water in the middle of a cold winter? Does anyone on here have experience of them?
As I said earlier I had my combi boiler serviced last week and the engineer said exactly that and the future is with hydrogen or green gas
I did see a report that scientist were hoping to obtain gas from grass but I have no idea how feasible that is
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
We had a very similar experience when our boiler had it's annual service last month.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Your engineer is exactly right, its amazes me the nonsense that is spouted about these heat exchangers. Unless technology develops significantly I doubt they will be installed in 5% of homes.
What's all this 'heat exchanger' stuff? Are we talking about heat pumps? Gas boilers have heat exchangers in them.
If we are on heat pumps, then I agree they're not great for retro-fitting as you need both larger radiators (for lower temperature water) or, ideally, under-floor heating. Plus excellent insulation. I'm a massive fan of heat pumps in new build - I've stayed in several properties with heat pumps - including air source - in winter and found them great - but not realistic for mass retrofitting, I think.
More realistic is the drop-in replacement electric boiler (or possibly modified gas). Or direct electric heating (although that's also more invasive - rip out radiators and fit electric ones). The issue there is price compared to gas, but if we get serious about renewable electricity and storage then that price differential could get much more attractive.
Realism though - this is mostly a decade or so away. People are not going to have to change their boilers tomorrow. We have a one year old gas boiler; it's a decent brand and on past performance that will last us until 2030 or beyond. Anecdotally, I know of a couple of people near us not on mains gas who have already fitted electric boilers when their bottle gas/oil boilers have failed as, for them, they've taken the view that's the better option. No incentives, just a hard-headed decision.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
That's why the "Fabric First" approach is absolutely critical.
Were the government to fund the whole thing, money-grubbers would just jump blindly on the bandwagon. That needs to be avoided at all costs.
I would do something like grants limited to EPC level C and above.
I would means test them as I just see this as handing the wealthy a cash grant they do not need
I have a lot of agreement with that viewpoint - though there is already a large energy efficiency means-tested programme running, and has been for a decade. That offers free replacement boilers where the old one is inefficient. ASHP might come under that, perhaps.
I expect support to be reduced as it was for for solar pv, and is being for electric cars.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
We had a very similar experience when our boiler had it's annual service last month.
Hope you are both well now OKC
Yes, I echo that sentiment. All the best Mr and Mrs OKC
Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%. Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn. Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation. Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration. If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
It’s going to be the single biggest problem for the government in the coming years.
If anything gets the PM in the next 12 months, it’s going to be listening too much to his wife and not enough to his backbenchers on the subject.
The Treasury should start spelling out the implications - whether they will or not, we'll see:
Next week Rishi Sunak will deliver his Budget. This week we should finally see @hmtreasury #netzero review. New @instituteforgov report says Chancellor must start talking (publicly) about net zero
There's a world of economic hurt coming and the Tories should take a hit for that.
One theory I've heard spouted, May 2023 GE which allows the Tories to put up taxes in late 2023 and not have to face the electorate for nearly five years.
That won't look like such a good idea by 2022.
Maybe, I suspect the earlier he goes to the country he can keep the Brexit coalition together as he will say voting Labour risks ruining/overturning Brexit .
What worries me (much to my surprise) is how the numbers have shifted on that in the last two months, including eating into that coalition.
It might not stay solid forever or, if it does, shrink down from 45-50% to an irreducible core of true believers at sub 30% at which point it becomes a handicap not an asset.
Yes, Labour is holding onto Remainers well, and gaining Leavers with buyers remorse. Not enough yet, but if the dam breaks...
SKS needs to be careful or he may get it wrong on Brexit a second time by overcompensating.
If that does happen the risk is it goes to their heads and their hand is massively overplayed.
A very good politician would recognise Britain is divided and come up with a long-term compromise that 70%+ could be satisfied with.
The sensible option for rejoiners is to press Labour to commit the UK to join EFTA. Which they could sell as part of their 'Make Brexit Work' stance.
So you want to see Labour commit to following EU rules and having free movement again?
And who do you think will vote for that and why? What will be gained from that?
EFTA does not mean either free movement (sadly) nor following EU rules. Freedom of movement only comes in if you take the further step of joining the EEA and neither involve following EU rules any more than we have to now.
Oh and I would vote for EFTA like a shot.
The EFTA agreement - IIRC - contains provisions for free movement between Lietchenstein - Iceland - Norway - Switzerland. (But does not, IIRC, contain the same provisions Maastricht did around treating foreigners as if they were citizens, which therefore made them eligible for benefits.)
As we have seem, the problem isn't benefits but the way open borders to the EU is a massive downwards drag on wages.
Yet the EFTA countries are all high-wage economies…
The EFTA countries don't have the UKs welfare state.
That someone can move to the UK, get a minimum wage job then immediately get housing allowance, tax credits or universal credit, child benefits etc isn't necessarily the same as in other nations.
You are right they don't have the same welfare state - in fact on average they have a far better welfare system. I suspect that were there an issue it would be that Norway and the rest would be worried about our people taking advantage of their system rather than the other way round.
But it is a false argument you make anyway since EFTA membership does not include any requirement for the countries to provide welfare assistance to the nationals of other member states.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
The subsisdy is simply a benefit to the wealthy. Who can mostly afford it.
The activists are fanatics. You cannot appease them.
What good would banning Combi boilers do without a fully working, scalable, alternative.
People still need to heat their homes. We have to be realistic there are millions and millions of gas boilers in the country and changing them all out is going to take years.
I'm getting a bit miffed at all this misleading reporting about new gas boilers being banned. This is false. What will be banned is new boilers that are not 'hydrogen ready', ie all new boilers must be capable of running on hydrogen when the network is converted from natural gas to hydrogen. The majority of homes with a gas boiler will carry on having a gas boiler. It's just that the fuel will be different.
My advice to anyone thinking of switching from gas central heating to a heat pump: Don't!
A very interesting point. Most people, while wanting to save the planet, also have other individual concerns, including big ones like what's the point unless China joins in, and small ones like what does this involve for me.
There may be significant gains in being a late adopter; since by being so you will have lots of real data on what actually works and what doesn't, you may well save money as costs tend to reduce as firms scale up and compete.
Heating a house is like educating your children; you only get one shot so to speak, and if you get a heating system wrong it is damaging, troubling and very costly to put right or replace.
And future projections are all very well. But my FM radio still works, and I still sometimes receive cheques (Google will tell the under 30s what they are).
Ms. Hughes, if that's accurate (about heat pumps) then they sound not only far too expensive, but far too useless.
A heating system that isn't hot enough is as much use as a shield made of cheese.
As one might expect, the Uk govt has no clue how to tackle the carbon footprint from domestic heating, because the technology just isn’t there yet to retrofit the existing housing stock without bankrupting the nation. So they bluster and virtue signal. The solution will probably be some combo of heat pumps for new builds, bio oil for those not on mains gas, and blue H2 for everyone else.
I have no problem with heat exchangers being phased in gradually. Presumably they will become more cost effective if gas prices continue to rise but do they work. Will they provide sufficient heat and hot water in the middle of a cold winter? Does anyone on here have experience of them?
As I said earlier I had my combi boiler serviced last week and the engineer said exactly that and the future is with hydrogen or green gas
I did see a report that scientist were hoping to obtain gas from grass but I have no idea how feasible that is
Hydrogen, except on a very limited scale, is a dead end as far as domestic heating is concerned. The cost of producing 'green' hydrogen is very high indeed, and if it ever becomes efficient enough to be cost competitive, the same will very likely be true for easier to handle synthetic fuels.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
The subsisdy is simply a benefit to the wealthy. Who can mostly afford it.
The activists are fanatics. You cannot appease them.
What good would banning Combi boilers do without a fully working, scalable, alternative.
People still need to heat their homes. We have to be realistic there are millions and millions of gas boilers in the country and changing them all out is going to take years.
1 - We subsidised solar pv to get it going, and bring the cost down. We subsidise the purchase of electric cars, and are reducing the subsidies.
What is the problem with the same principle?
2 - Agree with that - the noisy ones are gibberloons, so we get on with a sensible programme to deliver over a practical timespan at (hopefully) most economic cost.
3 - By and large we have one.
4 - Why can millions and millions of gas boilers not be replaced by a programme which is slated to run to 2045-2050? 25-30 years is a hell of a long time. Checkup how quickly the transition to natural gas happened.
(The ban is proposed on *new installations*, not aiui that all existing gas boilers be ripped out by 2035. So you have 2035 plus the lifetime of a gas boiler.)
I have no problem with heat exchangers being phased in gradually. Presumably they will become more cost effective if gas prices continue to rise but do they work. Will they provide sufficient heat and hot water in the middle of a cold winter? Does anyone on here have experience of them?
We have installed 5 in domestic new build properties, all had a plant room to accommodate all the equipment required, the cost was between £15-£20,000, the users are disappointed with the heat provided so far and that will only get worse as the days get colder. Currently although we make more money out of ASHP we would never recommend them.
Another point to remember is heating in a Commercial setting. We do lots of boiler changes in School's. We did 4 this summer, all were changing old gas boilers for new.
On a technical note a gas boiler will provide output at 80 degrees, an ASHP willprovide output at 30-40 degrees. Therefore the size of pipework in a house willhave to be changed from the standard 15mm to anything between 22mm to 42mm depending on the output of the ASHP and all the radiators will need to be changed to match the new pipework. Imagine having 42mm pipework running throughout your house.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
LOL
But £6,000 - £18,000 less £5,000.
People will do the math.
We are coming to the moment climate change collides with the cost
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
The subsisdy is simply a benefit to the wealthy. Who can mostly afford it.
The activists are fanatics. You cannot appease them.
What good would banning Combi boilers do without a fully working, scalable, alternative.
People still need to heat their homes. We have to be realistic there are millions and millions of gas boilers in the country and changing them all out is going to take years.
I'm getting a bit miffed at all this misleading reporting about new gas boilers being banned. This is false. What will be banned is new boilers that are not 'hydrogen ready', ie all new boilers must be capable of running on hydrogen when the network is converted from natural gas to hydrogen. The majority of homes with a gas boiler will carry on having a gas boiler. It's just that the fuel will be different.
My advice to anyone thinking of switching from gas central heating to a heat pump: Don't!
80% of the network is already Hydrogen compatible. So it is not as onerous a task to change over.
Hydrogen is the future for domestic heating. I agree with you on Heat Pumps. I’d avoid like the plague.
Gas boilers to heat pumps. If the £5,000 subsidy starts in April, hasn't the government just killed the market for the next six months, or am I missing something obvious?
Heat Pumps already get something called Renewable Heat Incentive, which is usually more generous than £5000, though spread out over 7 years in monthly payments. Not one I know the details of absolutely.
People I am in touch with are rushing to get them done by then.
With an ASHP when the temperature outside is below 5 degrees it will regularly go into defrost mode, hence heat itself to stop itself freezing up. During this period which will last between 1-2 hours no heating will be provided to the property.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
We had a very similar experience when our boiler had it's annual service last month.
Hope you are both well now OKC
Thanks, Mr G; I would describe us as better, rather than well, we still have occasional fits of coughing. And I certainly do not feel quite as spritely as a few weeks ago.
For all the talk about the cost of replacing gas boilers, flip the argument over and look at the costs of not replacing them. The UK burned its gas reserves for profit and is now increasingly reliant on nice Mr Putin. I am sure new boilers will cost £dollah but so does gas.
A strategic disengagement from our reliance on imported gas is a good idea - but we need something long-term to replace them with. The COP26 solution is wind, solar, tidal combined with battery storage. Invest in renewables so that we can actually have wind and solar installations that we made rather than imported, build the tidal generators that the environmentalists wet themselves over. And commission British Volt to build storage batteries..
We will still need gas and nuclear and we probably need to invest in nuclear instead of letting the Chinese do it. But we can move away from gas. All these boilers we are talking about will get replaced at some point - just have an incentive scheme to make the replacements renewable.
I had my boiler serviced last week and the engineer said the move to heat exchangers is not the answer for the vast majority of homes due to the huge cost of installation and that in winter they would not be able to produce the heat required
He went on to say he believes hydrogen will become much more sensible but he also said he expected gas in future to be from green sources much like the change from town gas to natural gas
Gas plumbers and engineers may not be the most neutral source of information on the deprecation of using gas.
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Heat pumps work fine in winter, especially English winters where the temperature rarely gets below zero. A properly specced heat pump will work well down into sub zero temperatures. You can even get ones that are built for sale in more northern climes & will happily deliver heat in Finish or Canadian winters. (Presumably these need much larger heat exchangers & are correspondingly expensive, but I’ve not actually looked.)
They’re more efficient the smaller the difference between the external temperature and the heating temperature is, so if you’re in a house which only warms up in winter with the radiators roaring away at 80°C then you’re going to have a bad time.
If your idea of house heating is “if I can’t feel the radiant heat from my heating system then it isn’t working properly” then you aren’t going to like heat pumps. (NB, if you’re running your rads at 60-80°C to get that lovely radiant heat, then your gas boiler can’t work in condensing mode & is much less efficient. Drop the working temperature to < 55°C to get those lovely condensing efficiency benefits ! )
Hydrogen has it’s own problems - the gas industry likes it because they think they won’t have to change anything, but it’s an absolute bugger to keep in the pipes (hydrogen being very, very small compared with a methane or propane molecule). It also causes rapid embrittlement & subsequent failure of steel pipes, so we will have to replace the entirety of the high pressure gas distribution network in the UK, and probably a chunk of the low pressure (final miles) network as well. Fortunately, most homes themselves have used copper pipes to deliver gas internally, and those should be OK carrying Hydrogen.
Comments
"But the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
The general feeling being that Whitehall was back in the 'lets save a few million here' rather than looking long term.
Its certainly good news that the Valneva is making progress.
I have little confidence that COP26 will achieve anything but lots of hot air so to speak with hypocrisy on full view
This morning Sky are reporting a Democrat from a coal producing state intends sabotaging the US climate commitment meaning Joe Biden will attend the conference in name only, then we have China, India and others who are playing lip service to the objective of reducing carbon emissions
Boris has sensibly said that HMG wants to encourage the installation of heat exchangers but HMG will not enforce the banning of combi boilers and of course now faces the predictable fury of the activists
However, he understands that this has to be a process of persuasion notwithstanding that the public are in favour of climate change investment
The danger as I see it is that the wealthy will have no problem adapting and will no doubt be the loudest voices demanding the changes while vast swathes of ordinary people will stand on the sidelines in despair utterly unable to fund the costs
How many have access to the cost of heat exchangers and ev's of upto £30,000 or more
I expect lots of tension over this over the next few years
It would seem that EEA membership through EFTA could be the sweet spot, and ISTR that was exactly what leavers said they were aiming for during the referendum campaign.
Scotland peaked in early September at just under 8% estimated positivity rate. England is yet to peak.
https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1450365149555183619?s=20
The activists are fanatics. You cannot appease them.
What good would banning Combi boilers do without a fully working, scalable, alternative.
People still need to heat their homes. We have to be realistic there are millions and millions of gas boilers in the country and changing them all out is going to take years.
If anything gets the PM in the next 12 months, it’s going to be listening too much to his wife and not enough to his backbenchers on the subject.
Sorry if these points have already been covered.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46206788
My advice to anyone thinking of switching from gas central heating to a heat pump: Don't!
I did see a report that scientist were hoping to obtain gas from grass but I have no idea how feasible that is
If we are on heat pumps, then I agree they're not great for retro-fitting as you need both larger radiators (for lower temperature water) or, ideally, under-floor heating. Plus excellent insulation. I'm a massive fan of heat pumps in new build - I've stayed in several properties with heat pumps - including air source - in winter and found them great - but not realistic for mass retrofitting, I think.
More realistic is the drop-in replacement electric boiler (or possibly modified gas). Or direct electric heating (although that's also more invasive - rip out radiators and fit electric ones). The issue there is price compared to gas, but if we get serious about renewable electricity and storage then that price differential could get much more attractive.
Realism though - this is mostly a decade or so away. People are not going to have to change their boilers tomorrow. We have a one year old gas boiler; it's a decent brand and on past performance that will last us until 2030 or beyond. Anecdotally, I know of a couple of people near us not on mains gas who have already fitted electric boilers when their bottle gas/oil boilers have failed as, for them, they've taken the view that's the better option. No incentives, just a hard-headed decision.
I expect support to be reduced as it was for for solar pv, and is being for electric cars.
A heating system that isn't hot enough is as much use as a shield made of cheese.
Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.
Next week Rishi Sunak will deliver his Budget. This week we should finally see @hmtreasury #netzero review. New @instituteforgov report says Chancellor must start talking (publicly) about net zero
https://twitter.com/jillongovt/status/1449988777439543296?s=20
But it is a false argument you make anyway since EFTA membership does not include any requirement for the countries to provide welfare assistance to the nationals of other member states.
This is another straw man.
There may be significant gains in being a late adopter; since by being so you will have lots of real data on what actually works and what doesn't, you may well save money as costs tend to reduce as firms scale up and compete.
Heating a house is like educating your children; you only get one shot so to speak, and if you get a heating system wrong it is damaging, troubling and very costly to put right or replace.
And future projections are all very well. But my FM radio still works, and I still sometimes receive cheques (Google will tell the under 30s what they are).
As far as existing housing stock is concerned, any large scale adoption of heat pumps in the near term might well be in combination with gas boilers - you get about half of the green benefit without losing the ability to cope with peak heat demands.
https://hybridheatingeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/hhe_vision-paper_final.pdf
We subsidise the purchase of electric cars, and are reducing the subsidies.
What is the problem with the same principle?
2 - Agree with that - the noisy ones are gibberloons, so we get on with a sensible programme to deliver over a practical timespan at (hopefully) most economic cost.
3 - By and large we have one.
4 - Why can millions and millions of gas boilers not be replaced by a programme which is slated to run to 2045-2050? 25-30 years is a hell of a long time. Checkup how quickly the transition to natural gas happened.
(The ban is proposed on *new installations*, not aiui that all existing gas boilers be ripped out by 2035. So you have 2035 plus the lifetime of a gas boiler.)
Another point to remember is heating in a Commercial setting. We do lots of boiler changes in School's. We did 4 this summer, all were changing old gas boilers for new.
On a technical note a gas boiler will provide output at 80 degrees, an ASHP willprovide output at 30-40 degrees. Therefore the size of pipework in a house willhave to be changed from the standard 15mm to anything between 22mm to 42mm depending on the output of the ASHP and all the radiators will need to be changed to match the new pipework. Imagine having 42mm pipework running throughout your house.
Hydrogen is the future for domestic heating. I agree with you on Heat Pumps. I’d avoid like the plague.
People I am in touch with are rushing to get them done by then.
Heat pumps work fine in winter, especially English winters where the temperature rarely gets below zero. A properly specced heat pump will work well down into sub zero temperatures. You can even get ones that are built for sale in more northern climes & will happily deliver heat in Finish or Canadian winters. (Presumably these need much larger heat exchangers & are correspondingly expensive, but I’ve not actually looked.)
They’re more efficient the smaller the difference between the external temperature and the heating temperature is, so if you’re in a house which only warms up in winter with the radiators roaring away at 80°C then you’re going to have a bad time.
If your idea of house heating is “if I can’t feel the radiant heat from my heating system then it isn’t working properly” then you aren’t going to like heat pumps. (NB, if you’re running your rads at 60-80°C to get that lovely radiant heat, then your gas boiler can’t work in condensing mode & is much less efficient. Drop the working temperature to < 55°C to get those lovely condensing efficiency benefits ! )
Hydrogen has it’s own problems - the gas industry likes it because they think they won’t have to change anything, but it’s an absolute bugger to keep in the pipes (hydrogen being very, very small compared with a methane or propane molecule). It also causes rapid embrittlement & subsequent failure of steel pipes, so we will have to replace the entirety of the high pressure gas distribution network in the UK, and probably a chunk of the low pressure (final miles) network as well. Fortunately, most homes themselves have used copper pipes to deliver gas internally, and those should be OK carrying Hydrogen.