Around one in five households increased their consumption of gas after installing energy efficiency measures such as loft and cavity wall installation, according to an intriguing survey published by two economists at the University of Cambridge. It was found that insulating lofts and cavity walls of existing U.K. housing stock only reduced gas consumption for the first year or two, with all energy savings vanishing by the fourth year after a retrofit. Presenting their findings, the economists propose other means to cut gas use including rationing. “Energy reduction targets could be established for households,” they suggest. Of course, stealth rationing is already becoming common in the elitist Net Zero war on personal transport, with £6 billion of petrol taxes planned, along with increasing numbers of local charging zones.
Researchers analysed gas consumption patterns over 12 years to 2017, and found that cavity wall insulation led to an average 7% drop during the first year. This shrank to 2.7% in the second, and by the fourth year any energy savings were “negligible”. Loft insulation was even less effective with 1.8% of savings after one year, and any gains disappearing after this.
The findings call into question the recent announcement that the Government intends to spend £6 billion trying to reduce energy consumption over the next eight years by 15%. Much of this money will be spent across the residential sector. Last November, the Business and Energy Secretary Grant Shapps announced a new £1 billion ECO+ scheme to target those in the least energy efficient homes. He claimed it would save consumers £310 a year, a claim that seems fanciful in the light of the Cambridge report.
In less wealthy areas of the U.K., the reductions in gas use were half those found elsewhere. The figure was as low as 3% during the first and second year after refit. In the bottom 20%, gas consumption actually rose after installation.
Economists have a theory for this type of behaviour called ‘rebound’. If you cut the price of holidays to France by half, some people will go twice. The researchers suggest that when it comes to home insulation there may be a significant ‘rebound’ effect. Any savings through energy efficiency get cancelled out by a steady increase in energy use. Behaviours associated with this ‘rebound’ including turning up the heating, but can include opening windows in stuffy rooms and building extensions such as conservatories.
Home insulation is not a “magic bullet”, states co-author Professor Laura Diaz Anadon, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance. “High gas prices will reduce the rebound effect in the short term, as homeowners have the need to keep costs down at the front of their minds. In the long term, simply funding more of the same insulation roll-out to meet the U.K.’s carbon reduction and energy security targets may not move the dial as much as is hoped,” added Anadon.
Blowing six billion pounds of taxpayers’ money on home insulation that in many cases may actually increase gas consumption might seem a spectacular waste of money even by Whitehall standards. But as with personal transport, more forceful measures are also planned, namely replacing automobiles and gas boilers with inferior products such as battery cars and heat pumps. The Cambridge authors note that heat pumps extract warmth from outside to heat internal radiators, and are “highly efficient and negate the need for gas boilers”. Other explanations are available, including the view that heat pumps are noisy, expensive, difficult to install and produce only tepid water that needs further heating to warm a U.K. house in the middle of winter.
Both loft and cavity wall insulation are at the easy end of the improvements market. Cavity wall insulation is a common procedure, while securing a loft is a home DIY job. To make a substantial difference, all the doors and windows in often leaky U.K. houses need to be made airtight. This is impossible with natural wood frames, and all must be replaced. Unless this is done, a heat pump will struggle to warm a British house to a comfortable temperature.
As with most Net Zero innovations, the real cost is stratospheric and largely hidden from consumers of mainstream media. The Government’s own in-house green activist unit, the Climate Change Committee, claims it would cost £10,000 to insulate a home and install a heat pump. Earlier this year, Professor Michael Kelly said that insulating a home and installing a heat pump would actually cost £65,000. Professor Kelly arrived at his figure by referencing his experience in refitting social housing as Chief Scientific Adviser to the then Department for Communities and Local Government. Allowing for economies of scale, Kelly said that insulating and installing costs for 26 million homes, along with 5.5 million non-domestic properties, would total £3 trillion.
This last figure, of course, approximates to the annual GDP of the U.K. Add it to the growing pile of fantasy Net Zero costings and projects. How will all those electric heat pumps keep going when wind and solar fail for weeks on end in a freezing winter? How can batteries possibly provide the vast amounts of storage required when vital minerals such as cobalt quickly run out, and they all need replacing every ten years?
Treble ration books all round.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic‘s Environment Editor.
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