The sale of new boilers should be banned to force people to switch to ‘greener’ but more expensive and less effective heat pumps, the Government’s infrastructure chief has said. The Telegraph has the story.
Heat pumps, which draw energy from the air or ground using electricity, can cut carbon emissions by roughly 75%, but currently cost about £10,000 to install.
The National Infrastructure Commission is investigating ways to fund the transition and encourage the take-up of heat pumps and will make recommendations to the Government next year.
However, Sir John Armitt, its Chairman, suggested that a ban on the sale of new gas boilers would have to be part of the answer.
He told the Telegraph: “Why would you move to a heat pump at somewhere between £5-£15,000 as long as you can buy or exchange for a new gas boiler for £1,500? The only way that you can make such a significant shift is by saying, well, ‘from a particular date, you will not be able to buy a new gas boiler’.”
The Government has set an ambition for the sale of new gas boilers to be phased out by the mid-2030s, but has declined to set a date for a ban. …
Sir John dismissed hopes that hydrogen could play a significant role in replacing gas in boilers and said there was little alternative to heat pumps for the U.K. to decarbonise its home heating, which accounts for about 14% of emissions.
However, he said that using them to replace gas boilers in 23 million homes would require a change of attitude to heating, and might require back-up by space heaters because heat pumps work best at lower temperatures, which are maintained throughout the day.
“What we like at the moment is just flicking the thermostat and, bang, we can raise the temperature by three degrees fairly quickly. You can’t do that with an air-source heat pump,” he said.
“If you want instant heat, then you will have to plug something else in to give you that extra boost.”
Or maybe we should just stick with gas boilers and find other things to worry about than the world possibly getting slightly warmer over the coming century – which the U.K. stopping using gas boilers will not, even according to IPCC models, have any material effect on anyway.
Worth reading in full.
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Air source heat pumps in cold weather below 5° are not sufficiemtly effective that they do not require boosting from additional electricity input to provide sufficient heating in a normal UK house. This means during winter months they can be more expensive to run than gas boilers and do very little to reduce emissions. I would like to know what research the person making this recommendation has done in the real world, rather than the claims made by sellers of heat pumps. People given positions should know what they are talking about in the area they are supposed to be advising on and clearly this gentleman doesn’t.
Nonsense, go watch TechnologyConnections’ series on YouTube about successfully using a heat pump in Chicago – which has far harsher weather than London.
In related news, a DIY project (PV + battery + heat pump) by YouTuber Andreas Schmitz in Germany built by himself for half of the list price of a normal setup allowed this guy to heat his 160sqm home with electricity bill of 8 Euro this March.
These are some real-life economic examples, not random bs from people who reject the technology outright just because they don’t want to believe in climate change.
This man is a muppet.
Picture ref. the naked emperor, substack
Just another wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy based on shaky science of which challenges are ignored, cancelled or threatened.
What an egregious individual.
Clearly a trough-snouter with substantial investments in heat pump manufacturers.
Shoe horns beautifully into the EPC policy whereby you won’t be able to sell your house unless you have spent £10’s of thousands on insulation to get a “C” rating. You won’t be able to rent one either, or buy one. Nor will you be allowed a mortgage, or it will be at a much higher interest rate.
Carefully thought out to screw ordinary householders in every way possible, impoverish them and allow banks to acquire swathes of cheap real estate. All built around a ridiculous scam based on Carbon dioxide, an essential food for all plants.
Your Government is not working for you anymore, it’s a puppet for the Globalist corporations.
Electric heat pumps kind of defeat the object of efficiency as they need massive amounts of electricity to run. Reminds me of The Electric Mountain ( a fantastic engineering achievement) in Wales that boosts supply and then requires the amount it produces to recharge itself.
I want a mini nuclear power plant anyone knows who supplies them to joe public, I have space in the back garden.
Pumped storage schemes actually require more energy to pump the water than they generate. Their round-trip efficiency is usually in the order of 70-80%. However, they still make sense if the pumping takes place during off-peak periods when there is a power surplus, with the release of the stored water taking place when demand is high.
The problem with heat pumps replacing existing gas boilers is cost, but, rather than do the obvious, the Governments approach is to regulate and force change onto a sceptical public – the obvious solution is too prove that HP’s are effective (or not) and the simplest way to do this is too take a pair of semi’s – start from scratch and install one with a standard Combi boiler and all associated plumbing for radiators, hot water and then next door ditto but with a Heat Pump – now we have a fair comparison – we know all the material costs so these cannot be fudged, we can see what space each system takes up and we can judge each systems performance – heating, hot water, running costs. If this shows that one system is cheaper to run over 12months, the installation cost can be added as a percentage of the whole allowing a ten year life – so a £3000 Combi boiler would be £300 pa, a £18000 HP would be £1800 pa – that just leaves the cost of running – if the HP is less than £1500 (difference between Combi boiler and HP annual), then the HP… Read more »
Denmark has a slightly more sensible system, using heat networks to distribute power station waste heat and increasingly renewable heat to households in towns or suburbs. There are fewer limitations than electric heat pumps, which they’re mainly fitting to houses in the open countryside.
However, the UK suffers from ‘not invented here’ syndrome and doesn’t like to admit that others, especially small countries, may understand what they’re doing rather more than we do. So idiots like Sir John make the policy. Or rather, they implement a half-baked policy drawn up by the late Prof. David MacKay and Energy Minister Ed Miliband >10 years ago and hardly questioned since.
I am sure it would be entirely possible to dig up all the streets of towns and cities in the UK to install the pipe work necessary to distribute power station waste heat, at enormous cost from disruption and the resources required.
Do you have any idea just how much waste heat would be required to serve towns with hundreds of thousands and cities with millions of premises and many of them high-rise.
The UK, 67 million, is not Denmark, 5.8 million.
Another example of the fantasy thinking devoid of all and any practical considerations, not least Physics, that suffocates this whole subject.
Sir John, says it all. Like the rest of the government complete lack of understanding about science, any branch of it. Nothing but a Nazi forcing people deeper into poverty whilst this achieves nothing for ‘climate change’. An intellectual duffer, oh how unsurprising.
Politicians and their claque of experts have ‘The Science’ – and with this all things are possible, particularly perpetual motion.
‘Heat pumps, which draw energy from the air or ground using electricity, can cut carbon emissions by roughly 75%, but currently cost about £10,000 to install.’
Physics: energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Heat pumps draw their energy from the electricity grid!
Try using one without electricity, waiting for energy magically to appear out of the air.
The electricity operates a compressor to compress a gas and this gives out heat used to heat water. The gas then expands in a heat exchanger which absorbs heat energy stored in a gas – air… to replace the heat lost during compression. Repeat.
The alternative is to use the electricity to heat a metal element to heat the water directly. It requires less electricity to compress the gas than heat the element and thus the water, because some of the electric energy used to compress the gas is replaced by heat energy stored in the air.
But overall this is no more efficient than the stored heat energy released from the other gas – natural gas – during combustion.
And these clowns know that, but tell a lie. The lie being the electricity for the heat… Read more »
Actually, you can get the same heating performance (measured in BTU) by transferring (pumping) heat from outside using ~4x less energy input than you would need to produce that heat inside (burning gas or using electricity to make a resistor hot). Physics. Not everyone (e.g. you) understands it, but it still works.
Maybe he should climb back into his crypt for another five hundred years and see if climate change was real.
Nobody has yet explained to me why a gas boiler cannot be replaced with an electric boiler (proven to work, even in cold weather) instead of a heat pump. Maybe the amount of electricity is limited in heat pumps, making them not very reliable in winter.
Presumably, the powers that be do not want an army of people with central heating that works laughing at the heat pump adopters.
Because… it takes more electric energy to heat a given mass of water using a metal element, than burning natural gas. That is why we use gas boilers, not electric boilers.
Heat pumps rely on using, in part, electrical energy to compress a gas (like in a fridge) and part energy stored in the outside air.
However a heat pump using part electric energy, part heat energy stored in the air, is no more efficient than using the heat energy stored in natural gas.
So whilst electricity consumption by a heat pump is less than an electric boiler, it is no cheaper than natural gas boiler. That of course depends on the cost of electricity and gas.
It is clear however that the price of electricity will increase as more wind and ‘sustainable’ sources like biomass and solar, are added to the supply mix, and heat pumps will be considerably more expensive to run than gas boilers are now.
But of course if gas boilers are banned, people won’t know that, because there will be nothing with which to compare.
See what they are doing?
Wrong, you can produce 4x the BTU by using electric energy from a gas-powered electric power plant and a heat pump compared to burning the gas at your silly gas boiler. Simply because transferring heat energy through a short distance with help of refrigerants is 4x more efficient than converting energy stored in a fossil fuel into heat. But of course, you would not know that.
Electricity is (although maybe was) four times the price of gas per unit of heat – that’s why!
Also our National Grid will not cope and we’ll need massively more generating capacity than we have or likely to have any time soon.
Correct.
Armitt was head of Union rail who were building the channel tunnel rail link from London to Ashford the original design was contentious and involved a viaduct 20 or so yards from a housing estate amongst other goodies, when protestors turned up outside his house pointing out the error of his ways the design was amended. Still cost the Tories some seats in Essex and Kent
Yet another dickhead in a position of influence in the UK. Hands up those who voted for him?
Appointed by no less than Osborne and Hammond
He’s creating far more hot air than these heat pumps ever could. Let’s plug the likes of him into the grid, then we’ll all be nice and toasty!
Yet another example of the planetary insanity infesting this good Earth.
I can only see a tax-payers revolt as a non-violent means of putting an end to this assault upon humanity.
Our 22 year old Vokera Linea 28 combi boiler is doing just fine, touch wood.
The diverter valve needs a little drop of oil on the solenoid plunger every so often, and I replaced the domestic heat exchanger six months back.
You can stick your heat pumps up your aged bottom, Sir Whatever Your Name Is.
Another thing with replacing the average gas combi boiler is that you then need some DHW storage as heat pumps are not capable of quickly delivering hot water. Many homes do not have the space.
These ideas are dreamt up by ignorant fools who live in 4 bed detached houses and not a 3rd floor, 1 bed flat in Bermondsey .
Okay Sir John, and where do you, in your great expert wisdom, intend to get all the extra megawatts of electricity from for heat pumps?
And I ask you, as a self-confessed infrastructure expert, where is the National Grid infrastructure to deliver this extra power?
No, didn’t think you’d thought of that! Pathetic!
How rational is carbon-phobia? Carbon dioxide is a natural part of the ecosystem – it makes plants grow through photosynthesis. In pre-history levels are estimated to have been between 2000 and 6000 ppm – currently a little above 400 ppm !
You’re absolutely right.This is the fundamental bogus premise upon which all the lies of Climate change rest. That Carbon dioxide is harmful. It’s essential plant food and we would all benefit from a lot more of it.
We needed a new boiler back in 2010, when we had an extension built. The architect was a huge advocate for heat pumps. I looked into it extensively.
It seemed like lunacy. You could not get bath water hot enough, and we would have had to replace all radiators with giant things (in a 400 year old cottage…not much scope for that). It cost £10k back then, excluding radiator changes, would have needed extra electricity top ups all winter, and a new oil fired boiler was £5k for the thing itself and installation.
Our oil fired boiler is doing great, 12 years later.
So this clever bloke says we have to “plug something else in” does he?
Erm, would that “something” be powered by electricity then? And, if it is, how is that electricity being produced?
And, I bet this idiot has never had to pay to run storage radiators or electric fires! I’d guarantee that most people would struggle to do so, let alone being also forced to fork out for an utterly useless “heat” pump..
Yet another unelected “expert” whose head is firmly inserted in his posterior.
This is a war on our lives which we need fighting back against. The utter nonesense of this is plain to see. It’s beyond me why we aren’t organising already.
I agree. I can’t understand why people are just nodding along with all that is happening. What I find even more frightening is if you question the narrative you are treated so oddly. No such thing as a sensible discussion is possible, you just get pursed lips and anger directed at you. I have become even more vocal just lately to try and provoke discussion, but so far I have just had dagger looks and horrified reactions. Actually it is very wearing, and I can quite see it is easier to keep your opinions to yourself, but we can’t just stay silent, can we?
Give these Climate bedwetters both barrels whenever you get the chance, plenty around at the moment for the local elections.
You’re not allowed to object, that’s heresy, just start your coarse of jabs and go watch a woke netflix movie.
Even if the whole of the UK shut down, with everybody dead, and nothing happening and no CO2 or smoke being produced… China would happily continue building more coal-fired power stations and pumping out any old poisonous fumes into the atmosphere.
Arnold Schwazenegger owns 7 Hummer cars – one for every day of the week.
I really cannot understand where the religion of heat pumps comes from. So, in short, to preserve the planet, we are going to produce the least efficient type of energy that electricity is, and use it to harvest “heat” from air in WINTERS, which is mostly when you need your heating to work. Only problem is the air in winter happens to be cold… Even without being a physicist that should scream “nonsense”, or we just invented something even better than perpetuum mobile. Not to mention, couple of years ago we couldn’t buy hoovers stronger than 2 kWt, (can we now, I don’t even know), but now in totally countering move we are going to power cars, airplanes and heat homes of whole population with electricity… palmface ten times.
There is no “religion” involved. A setup in which a power plant centrally burns gas to produce electricity and you use that very electricity to transfer heat from outside to heat up your living space can be physically 4-5x more efficient than you burning that gas yourself (or using the electricity for direct heating).
Even cheap heat pumps work well in temperatures down to -10C. Yes, that means you can raise your room temperature to 20C (or more) even if there is -10C outside, using significantly less energy than you would require by using an electric heater.
It is neither nonsense nor perpetuum mobile – unless you want to convince someone that a refrigerator/freezer (which uses the same principle and “somehow” is able to keep <0C temperature despite room temperature everywhere around it) is a perpetuum mobile as well or that HVAC in summer is impossible. Your comment only speaks of your own ignorance of pretty basic science.
The real problem with mandating heat pumps along with regulations that forbid you from installing them in your home yourself is that this will artificially drive up prices and create an opportunity for installers to rip off consumers (eating up all the… Read more »
Johnson is only interested in climbing the greasy global pole
Where to? Johnson King of the World? I can’t see him being successful. Someone will step out of the shadows and even then the real power will be behind the throne.
I’ll be buying a new gas boiler a year before the date the f’wits announce they are banning them.
And I won’t be voting for any Party that advocates Net Zero.
We are on oil here. I have considered buying another boiler now and storing it until needed – our current boiler is only a few years old. Meanwhile, thank goodness for the multi fuel stove. I bet the sale of these is soaring.
All TPTB have to do to ensure compliance is make gas unaffordable or limit, cut off supply. We are at their mercy, there’s no escape. Unfortunately it won’t matter who you vote for as these policies are already embedded into the system of Global Public Private Partnerships. Haven’t you noticed we’re already to a large extent under global governance, such as the United Nations, World Health Organisation, World Economic Forum and their young global leaders .
The only escape is for the sheeple to awaken.
Whilst they are corrupt, sadistic and possibly psychopathic they are not f’wits. You won’t get any gas to power the boiler at a price that you can afford.
But in practical terms they don’t work. You need a highly insulated house, for a start. In the coldest months it’s like using an immersion heater to heat the house. The first wave of installations only took place due to the RHI bribes, ie a payment to reward the greedy and gullible. Heat pumps break, frequently. Heat pumps need maintenance and correct set up. Replacement parts (circuit boards) cost several hundred pounds. As to the cost – heat pumps cost at least 10 times more than traditional boilers. Unaffordable on a typical salary. The oafs coming out with these ridiculous edicts clearly cannot do basic maths, do not understand physics and have no empathy for others.
They have no empathy because they are trousering vast sums of taxpayers’ money for their obscene salaries and gold plated pension so can easily afford heat pumps, in addition to their virtue signaling EV as their second car.
What’s not to like about that; if you’re in the business that is.
How about we set a climate goal like limiting temperature rise in say 10 years time to a certain level and see how it goes. Then, if the deadly limit hasn’t been reached, we don’t need to wory.
Oh, I forgot. They have been doing that for the last 30 years and we are still waiting for armageddon.
Yeah they’re giving up on that. We can start fracking and use nuclear because they’ll have started WW3 before it comes online and there’ll only be a million of us still alive.