We’re publishing a guest post by Guy de la Bédoyère, historian and long-standing contributor to the Daily Sceptic about the exorbitant cost of installing a heat pump. He reckons that if you factor in set-up costs and running costs, it would cost him around £40,000 over the next 10 years.
Listening to someone who has just had a heat pump installed and is banging on like a religious zealot – as I have done – is like coming across a man dancing for joy because he has just had his wallet stolen and lost his life savings.
Several years ago we started investing in a solar panel system. It was a no-brainer. We had the money earning nothing in the bank and we are fortunate enough to live in a suitable house with a large outbuilding on which the (nominal) 4KW system was fitted. It cost about £5,000, having dramatically come down in price as soon as government grants were ended. Fancy that?
We noticed the reduction in electricity bills immediately and to that we could add the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) which is, sadly, no longer available to new installers. Under its terms, you get paid for the power you generate, whether or not you’ve used it yourself. In 2020 we added two batteries because, after all, a solar power system without batteries is like filling the bath without the plug in. That cost about another £3,000 (including the additional inverter and wiring), but we have since added a third (£900) and will have a fourth fitted next month. That represents a practical limit to our setup.
The bottom line is that the system is paying for itself. The annual return on the capital is about 16% so most of the outlay has been recovered. The electricity is free and – crucially – harvesting it is free too. The system runs the house for nothing most of the day, as well as diverting spare power via a special device to heating our water and charging the batteries. We can now run all evening and most of the night for free as well. Even better, the higher electricity prices rise, the more we’re saving.
Heat pumps are, as it turns out, an entirely different story, but the way some politicians and journalists bang on, you could be forgiven for thinking they’re going to save the planet and your bank balance by using all that free energy from Mother Nature. No, they won’t and I’m not even going to discuss how well they heat a house.
I’ve just had a quote for a heat pump, in this case an ‘air source’ version. It would cost us £11,000 for the pump, topped up by a government grant of £5,000 to cover the full price of £16,000. That does not take into account potential extra costs for enhanced insulation to make up for the relatively low heating capability of the system, and possibly having to replace the radiators.
And then there’s the cost of running it, something most people do not realise. The estimated power consumption of our putative heat pump was to be just over 10,500 KWh per annum. That’s just under 29 KWh per day, or about £7–£8 at present prices (factoring in that daily use in winter would be far higher). You can work that out from your electricity bill, but in my case that represents a 400–500% increase in my bill by £3,000 per annum on top of what I already pay.
Although the heat the pump extracts from the atmosphere is ‘free’, the pump requires a huge amount of additional power from the grid to run the system, unlike a solar panel setup, and there’s no feed-in tariff of any sort – obviously, because it isn’t generating any new power. The system was to be guaranteed for 10 years which therefore means at current prices you are looking at around £40,000 over that period (running costs + initial outlay).
I might add that our solar panels are on a roof and don’t get in anyone’s way. One of the inverters is in the outbuilding and the one for the batteries is in the utility room. An air source heat pump, by contrast, is a large appliance that looks like an air conditioning unit suitable for a small block of flats being parked outside your house and connected with large pipes. A ground source pump means ripping up quite a lot of your garden (if you have one).
Now, it’s pretty obvious that the oil we are using for our existing boiler has gone up hugely in price and it may get worse. But I can’t see any basis for dumping an existing system that works perfectly well for one that costs just as much (or more to run) and might cost me as much as £15,000 to install.
And let’s not forget: manufacturing all these new heat pumps comes with its own massive carbon footprint. But apparently, heat pump fanatics are perfectly happy to overlook that, as well as the gigantic Ioad that heat pumps will impose on the grid and all the installations and infrastructure necessary to cover that as well as to charge all the electric cars we’re being encouraged to buy. To put it into perspective, I’d have to have four times as many solar panels and batteries as I already have just to run the heat pump if I was to cover its needs myself.
As so often with government initiatives and especially Net Zero, one just has to wonder: how stupid do they think we are? I’m all for saving energy, but I’m not going to change my heating system for one that replaces being ripped off for oil by being ripped off for electricity and paying out well over 10 grand for the privilege.
The difference in the maths between the solar panels and the heat pump is enormous. One makes sense because it pays for itself, cuts bills, and ends up returning a profit, but still depends on having the room and the funds. The other under present circumstances is lunacy – unless, and only if, you are having to replace the heating system anyway. But it will still cost far more than a conventional replacement.
This may be settled in the future. Heat pumps are at an early stage of development. The most likely prospect is that they will become far cheaper and far more efficient. The worst thing that could happen now is millions of people being coerced and rushed into installing, or convincing themselves to install, existing inefficient and costly systems and then being obliged to scrap them in favour of newer, ‘greener’ heat pumps in a few years.
Or could that be the plan all along – to empty out people’s savings on the latest moral crusade? The moment one understands the Net Zero cult to be just as much about making money and futile gestures as anything else it all finally makes sense.
If we rush into this, it’s almost inevitable we’ll make things worse and then we, like most past generations, will be cursed by our descendants.
I sent some of this to Roger Harrabin, the soon-to-retire BBC’s Energy and Environment Analyst, whom I used to know when I worked there. He told me he’d “filed it”. Hmmm. I bet he did.
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So true. Identity politics generally has a lot to answer for. Simplistic crap. The Left really has to look at itself.
“Simplistic crap”
… like the right wing agenda that has, over 40 years got us into this current crap as capitalist corruption reaches its apogee. Self examination by the Right might be equally in order – as opposed to the applying the rightist woke absent-without-leave whine of ” ’tweren’t us, Sir’ to every situation … when the fingerprints show otherwise.
The capitalist corruption, as you call it, has gone hand in hand with the Left. It’s corrupt because there are no morals any more, no ethics, no sense of civic duty. That went away with the assault on the Christian religion.
Self examination by the Right is long overdue, mainly with regard to the complete capitulation to the far Left
So, that explains the Tories’ virtually undisguised corruption when it has come to awarding lucrative contracts to their old school friends? It’s all about capitulation to the far left and not going to Church anymore? When was this golden age of of pure as driven snow capitalism? Might it be fair to say that I don’t think you’ve really thought this through?
Yes agree with that too. They’re all as bad as each other really with not a moral backbone among them.
And it’s mostly based on lies and denial of reality.
The last thing the Left will do is look at itself. Its only interest is power. Its only standards are double. Hypocrisy is its byword.
No – the point is that left/right is irrelevant to this utter shit show. We’re in another descriptive dimension.
A pity. Column inches wasted on hobby-horse riding.
Make no mistake – I dislike posturing – labelled as ‘wokeism’ if against other personal prejudices – whether from left (privileged groups countering inequalities by costless and pointless gesture), right (whining incontinently about imagined slights to bovine stupidity and favourite prejudices) or centre (whining about whatever).
But all this is just white noise in the background of politics. This article, because of the hobby horse, rides past the true significance of all this.
This article is a distraction play from those who really led the way on lockdowns.
So why hasn’t the author had the balls to pit his name to this? Giving in to ‘woke-ism’?
Nothing about the internationally co-ordinated response. Nothing about it being Italian ‘lockdown’ that inspired the Ferguson comment ‘we didn’t know we could get away with it in the ‘domocratic’ west’ ( incidentally there is little ‘democratic’ about the current way Italy is governed, nobody voted them into power). Nothing about Big Pharma, nothing about Dorsten and the PCR test. Nothing about that this happened while Trump was in the WH, not the wokeist Dems.
But above all nothing about the continuing amplification of the ‘new normal’ by the introduction of biotech IDs etc.
Ah poor ‘Boris’ &co they are just poodles caught up in this maelstrom of progressiveness. B.S.!
Johnson has always been an opportunist and he has increasingly seen this ‘crisis’ as a great way of covering up the mess his deal at transend has made to trade with the EU and now the risks of bloodshed reemerging in N.Ireland.
Allied of course to the need for him to be seen as the leader of fatuous green policies which would have inevitably required force to inflict on the UK public once they realised the true costs both monetary and to their standard of living.
Sorry Mr Young, I am not buying the hypothesis put forward, although it nicely summarises a lot of contributory factors.
… and, of course, no focus on a major strand : the venal, significance seeking or lazy ‘scientists’ from the disciplines of epidemiology or public health.
Vain, self-important, amoral, devoid of empathy, unable to imagine they might be wrong despite enormous evidence to that effect. Pantsdowns, the lot of them.
“So why hasn’t the author had the balls to pit his name to this?”
Maybe he doesn’t want to be cancelled from his job, and subjected to threats similar to the ones directed at Toby, i.e. having his throat cut.
To include all those other points you raise would take a small booklet, not a single article.
We already are aware of all of those points, but the question still remains as to why and how such deceit as Drosten and the PCR test could take place and not be more firmly challenged. Twenty years ago it probably could have been, but it’s the current political climate that no longer allows it.
The same cancel culture pervades everything, from climate change, video games, Brexit, Trump, you name it. Only one opinion is allowed. All else must be silenced.
There’s a much bigger picture: a global elite with a long-term plan to bring about global government through the Great Reset and to reduce the world population so that they – the fittest – will survive. Safetyism and victim mentality are definitely contributing factors, but also part of the plan to bring about societal collapse and destroy the Judeo-Christian foundation of western society.
It’s a multi faceted phenomenon, underpinned by human weaknesses and character flaws. I am beginning to think we’re forever hanging by a thread and ripe to be pushed over the edge by the next perfect storm, be it the idea of a pointless war or a virus.
What baffles me about it is the sheer futility of it. Apart from a very few who stand to gain, it’s a collective own goal of gigantic proportions – one of the biggest in history. Whether you’re “woke” or “left” or “right” or whatever, the life we’ve ended up with now is shit by any standards, and we’ve gained nothing.
Futility.
Got it in one.
Governments panicked.
Governments imitated Communist China because it was stamping on people’s faces.
Governments found that they enjoyed stamping on people’s faces.
Nothing surprising so far.
Zombies enjoyed having their faces stamped on.
That surprised me.
Maybe it shouldn’t have.
NO – this is completely off track. Sorry Toby and the Russel group epidemiologist, but by putting up a smokescreen article like this, you are in effect assisting the WEF elite members with delivering their dystopian master plan. This article is not worth reading in full. It is no more realistic an explanation than the global panic or the group think hypotheses . It doesn’t stack up when critically analysed from every angle and applied to every policy decision and practical response globally, let alone for the UK. Why continue to ignore the obvious – and now blatant behaviour of the WEF partners? The current situation has been in the planning stages for years. The WEF however, were struggling to overcome the barriers to implementing all the stages of the Great Reset – until the coronavirus pandemic. Now all the steps and individual plans are being implemented in a steady, carefully orchestrated accelerated schedule whilst the conditions to do so are favourable – as Klaus Schwab openly described in his address last winter (early 2020). Since Gates funded a WEF international seminar on planning for a coronavirus pandemic in October 2019 – attended by key representatives from the UK cabinet – it is hardly surprising many have referred to it as a plandemic. Whether the virus escaped from the Wuhan virology lab which was working on chimera coronaviruses (why?) through infected workers or faulty drains or another means of an accidental leak, or whether it was released deliberately, it is unlikely us ordinary folk will ever learn the truth. But either way, as the core WEF partners have confirmed, it provided the perfect opportunity to put the Great Reset strategy into practice – and during the emergency legislation and lockdowns, with the propaganda campaign of fear, ‘re-condition’ people to accept a ‘new normal’ and whilst all the emergency legislation was still in place simultaneously bring forward the delivery timescales.
Anyone who has spent months studying the WEF plans and the events unfolding step-by-step will immediately recognise what is being orchestrated – and who are leading and managing this programme. China, Gates, Fauci, the WHO, big tech, big pharma and financial institutions are all heavily involved. Boris is no innocent. He is also a key member of the WEF, as are Hancock, Whitty, Valance, Gove and Van Tam. They have even been speakers at WEF conferences and BJ has been seen wearing a WEF lapel badge on television and has quoted from Klaus Schwab’s book on the Great Reset. Plus it was confirmed on the Gov.UK website in 2019 that the UK had formed a partnership with the WEF to deliver the Fourth Industrial Revolution – which includes digital IDs for every citizen and a Chinese style social credit system.
maybe a less smokescreen story: Newspapers educated pupils like Dr.med.Leyen (current EU leadership) over many years that all kind of infections were hand-related.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/gallery/2020/mar/12/soap-saves-lives-adverts-in-the-guardian-after-the-spanish-flu-outbreak
Dr. Snyder found 2010: „absence of data demonstrating that hand hygiene reduces transmission of influenza“
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/202/7/1146/838461
Dr. Tedros first diagnose in Feb 20:“Ebola and this are not the same. Ebola is lousy. This is airborne, Corona is airborne” would say that the newspaper were wrong
…. delivering their dystopian master plan more an side effect of long term education by newspapers
*Whether the virus escaped from the Wuhan virology lab which was working on chimera coronaviruses (why?)*
The Wuhan BSL4 lab was working on gain-of-function coronaviruses on contract from EcoHealth Alliance, this research was deemed illegal in the west – hence why it was shipped East.
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/
The name you need to focus in on is one Dr. Peter Daszak.
And guess who this ties back to?
This vid outlines some of the detail (though a tad theatrical)
https://youtu.be/dUzrEn8nmFo?t=68
The bigger question accident or deliberate?
Thank you for these links Galene77. Gates and Fauci cropping up yet again was not a surprise. One, or both of them, seem to crop up just about everywhere one looks in connection with the pandemic (or plandemic). 100% not coincidental; and of course they are both core WEF partners. Had not looked into EcoHealth Alliance before. I did notice quite a few WEF partners listed on their website. How on earth people can still ignore or dismiss their part in this I simply cannot understand.
There’s a lot on that ecohealth website – what should we be looking for specifically?
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/corona_und_die_neandertaler
Wokeism only plays a role for that in sofar as it laid the groundwork for some of the necessary preconditions.
Obviously, it has gained in importance and zealousness since.
Others were demographics and here in particular that a majority of people in the West is now living from handouts from the state and low/no interest on government debt.
No, sorry. This is buck-passing for Boris and his henchmen, “We were only doing what the public were clamouring for.” It won’t wash.
It’s an oversimplification, and an error, to ascribe the turn to Lockdown purely to “progressive” poltics.
IMHO, Lockdowns and other NPIs came about due to a positive-reinforcement cycle involving the media, the political establishment, and the scientific community. A cycle that was started at a time when very limited reliable data was available. This data-poor positive reinforcement cycle continues today. We see it, for example, in the decision of Governments and health agencies to curtail the use of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. We see it in the continuation of social-distancing and other restrictions at a time when deaths, hospitalisations, and infections are falling fast.
When European nations, starting with Italy, first went into lockdown in February and March of 2020, it was not widely understood that by far, mortality was concentrated in the 80+ age cohort and those with serious health co-morbidities. This information had not been reported by China. It was not reported from Italy.
It is my contention that if people had understood that most, if not strictly all, of the deaths from covid-19 were going to be amongst people in their 80s and 90s – then there would have been much greater public and political pushback to the scandalous restriction of social and political freedoms.
why not name the billion dollar business from coarse hero (hammer & dance) that advertise to follow Italy instead Japanese lockdownsceptics?
The media – particularly the BBC – clamoured for lockdown and businesses being closed. To me they jointly share the blame with the government and when it became sufficiently obvious that questions needed to be asked they were found massively wanting.
Good article,as far as it goes, thanks Toby.
There has been a lot of pondering the role of “the left” during this disastrous year, but only at Offguardian, left lockdown sceptics, here and one/two other sites.
Much of the left- right thing is used to keep people apart
We need to quickly form up under a wider principle of preserving the essential elements of our freedoms and privacy this will unite many of all political persuasions against the encroaching tyranny.
We need somehow to bring together the popular publicly recognised but disparate voices who’ve been against this agenda but have struggled to sustain their opposition and build on their individual efforts as a movement on social media/internet/leaflets/posters/demos eg the french flash musicians .
Toby , you and Delingpole are much better placed to help start this than us, do you want to spend the rest of your life in a surveillance gulag being injected every year by the state ..
The CCP’s 50 cent army was very active in pushing the idea of lockdowns in the west. By their very numbers they can make it seem like there is a consensus.
The sad fact that the author is scared of revealing his identity says it all.
He may have a doctorate, but he needs to learn how to use paragraphs to make his work readable.
I have a different theory. The approach to covid has all the elements that we have been conditioned to accept in the approach to Climate Change:
This approach is now embedded in our mindset, even for many who can’t be accused of Wokeism.
Very true
The public’s willingness to comply might be partly explained by wokeist indoctrination but the political consensus is due to the G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism that makes all participating countries work in “Lockstep” and driven by whoever funds the “scientists”.
An excellent piece of work and a classic example of why the failure to have epidemiologists on SAGE has cost this country dear. Just exactly why did the Government listen to a mathmatical modelling team, the accuracy of whose previous forecasts had always been miles out, and as a result of their consequent panic throw out the pandemic preparedness strategy. You would almost think that money had crossed palms?
This is the most lucid analysis I’ve read this year of the roots of the madness that has engulfed us.