In a stunning intervention, a major heat pump supplier has attacked Scottish Government plans to use them to replace gas boilers in Scotland, warning they don’t work well enough in the cold. The Telegraph has the story.
Lord Willie Haughey, the business tycoon, said the heating system is unsuitable for the Scottish climate as its performance declines markedly in freezing weather.
The Labour peer said some units can stop working properly at temperatures of -5°C (23°F), or require more electricity to function properly, resulting in higher bills.
Parts of Scotland hit –15°C last winter and the country holds the record for the U.K.’s lowest temperature of –27.2°C seen in Braemar in Aberdeenshire in 1982 and Altnaharra in Sutherland in 1995.
The multi-millionaire, who owns a heat pump company, also warned they were noisy and only heated water to 54°C (129.2°F) – less than the 60°C recommended by the Health and Safety Executive to kill the legionella bacteria.
His intervention came after Patrick Harvie, a Scottish Green minister, last week unveiled plans for homes to receive lower environmental ratings if they are heated using gas boilers.
From 2025, homes will need to achieve an EPC rating of C or above at certain trigger points, including a sale, meaning some properties with boilers will be barred from being put on the market.
A strategy published by ministers in 2021 said that the average cost of installing a heat pump is around £10,000, four times the £2,500 cost of a new fossil fuel boiler. Lord Haughey said the cost was now £15,000.
Air source heat pumps work by extracting heat from the air while ground source pumps are powered by cables buried quite deep in the earth next to the house.
The pump then uses electricity to amplify that energy into heat for the home. They were originally developed as air conditioning systems.
Lord Haughey, who made his millions through a global refrigeration business, said: “I have a heat pump company and following Patrick Harvie’s announcement, I should really be jumping for joy. But the truth of the matter is that heat pumps don’t work as efficiently in Scotland as they do in other countries.”
Is this the heat pump industry’s Gerald Ratner moment?
Worth reading in full.
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In case anyone is confused that Scandinavians have heat pumps installed, they need to bear in mind that there are 2 sorts of heat pumps in the mainstream, air source and ground source. The former are easier to install in both new and existing situations but are compromised by the temperature of the air as the article says.
The type of heat pumps used in colder climes are ground source. The temperature of the ground is pretty constant a couple of feet underground and hence have similar performance year round. Installing them however is a major undertaking in terms of groundwork and ground usage, requiring excavations which would probably be impossible in the average suburban garden. Sweden, Finland and Norway have far more space to play with.
Not only do ground source heat pumps need space for installation, but where they are installed close together, as might happen on a housing estate, their efficiency declines over time. When they extract heat from the ground, they rely on new heat flowing in from the surrounding area. When they are surrounded by other systems the heat that would flow in has already been extracted by neighbouring systems hence they have to work much harder (consume more electricity) for the same heat output.
Their name is misleading, they should be called warm pumps.
Thank you, faffor
In German, they are indeed called warmth pumps.
The really big, costly and often technically impossible or damaging issue is in the case of practically all existing buildings the insulation and underfloor heating required to make them viable and these costs, which are a multiple of the cost of the pumps.
In conjunction with these energy rating requirements, that basically constitutes an expropriation of the owner.
They are also a spectacularly idiotic idea with regard to overall, non-existant CO2 reduction when the generation mix for the required electricity is considered and offset against the gas boilerd ones.
Nowhere more so than in Germany, where 40% of that electricity is generated through burning ignite, planned to now be replaced by yet to be built(!) new gas power stations (running on imported LNG gas from the US at 5x the price and CO2 emissions than Russian gas), but as such similarly so in the UK.
The planned forced replacement of gas boilers with these pumps is also estimated to only equal the CO2 reduction effect of letting just 1 of the 3 recently switched off nuclear power stations switched on.
In short: this whole thing is nothing but a criminal racket.
Luke warm pumps maybe..
What sort of temperature can be achieved using deep bore ground source pumps.
Depends how deep you are prepared to go. Miners of old worked stripped to the waist (or more!) because of the heat in deep mines.
In practical terms though, think of the temperature of the average cellar. It is not that warm but it is pretty constant. Heat pumps act as a sort of heat concentrator and don’t depend directly on ambient temperature, but do like a nice constant inflow of heat to compensate for what they take out of the ground.
Oh for ffs! I think I’ll just stick with me wood burner!
A good summary, Fistfull.
I might add that, obviously sub surface geology will vary the feasibility of ground source heat extraction. And that Will’s piece errs in suggesting that the heat is extracted from buried cables. Can’t see that working!
Usually buried pipes, often installed in boreholes, with a suitable pumped fluid circulating the heat.
Of course all this may well work for new-build houses of the super-rich. Often including in those “Grand Design” projects of Kevin McCloud. The ones so big, where you need a Segway to get to the toilet in time. But still “sustainable”, allegedly.
My house is more normal and built in 2001. Because it is near a small river, it has been elevated by raising the ground using compacted fill and therefore has a reinforced concrete slab foundation rather than the more normal strip foundations. So difficult to retro-fit circulation pipes or warm air ducts.
Because of this and other design features, the obvious heat source would be from the river. Can you imagine getting a permit for that? I can’t imagine that ANY kind of heat pump heating system could be practically installed whilst still living in the property. What might it cost? Maybe £50,000? Perhaps more?
For what? A bit of virtue signalling?
Thank you for that Rouby.
Can someone please explain to me why anyone would shell out a ‘small’ Chuckles the Third’, King’s ransom for one of these ridiculous systems without uncovering at least some of these failings? Is it so difficult to research properly?
Nope, it’s not!
I suspect the people installing these systems will also be proud and virtuous owners of one or more EVs.
There are 23 million gas boilers in the UK and it isn’t possible in many properties to have a heat pump. Not every dwelling has a garden. The cost of this absurdity of replacing the best heating system we ever had (gas central heating) is high, and all for what? So we can get a gold star on our lapel from the UN for pretending to save the planet.
Heat pumps don’t work in the cold.
Well, you don’t say.
Clue is in the name.
Clown world.
Meanwhile (largely for the benefit of MTF, to whom I promised a link) the IPCC’s Working Group 1 report pours lukewarm water on the whole climate emergency/ extreme weather threat. Willis Eschenbach’s article on it is here, and he links to the graphic below from the latest IPCC report itself, with the reference. Note that the one scary current finding – extreme heat – turns out to be merely the output of a model with no less than nine tunable parameters (when von Neumann said with four he could wiggle the ears on an elephant). It is not based on current data.
Needless to say the Summary for Policymakers (BY policymakers, not scientists) contradicts the science, and gets exaggerated by politicians, whose words are magnified by the press and the activists.
Ah. A hot air pump.
Quite. Costs nothing to run as it generates more than they put in.
Brilliant!
I’ll certainly steal that one!
This all part of the Agenda 21 war on property ownership in disguise. Slowly.. slowly.. the restrictions and costs on/of owning a house will push many into bankruptcy and onto the streets.
If you can’t attain grade C for your house (impossible for old stone/cob houses) you won’t be able to sell or rent it. Your house will then be classed as a ‘stranded asset’.. unfit to live in..
Remember : You’ll own nothing and be happy..
Whole towns of empty houses, with poor people squatting in them lighting fires with old timber. There won’t even be rapacious landlords charging exorbitantly, because they’ll all be bankrupt too. Sounds good for an aspiring novelist, Dickens having by then been cancelled as a transphobe.
If home owners cannot afford the manufactured financial burden, perhaps some incentives will come along to ease the cost or help with mortgage payments if they donate spare living space to refugees and illegal immigrants.
Expect those on private water supplies and private sewage systems to be targeted with ever restrictive and costly regulations at some point also. Effective way to depopulate the countryside.
Someone shared the below with me recently. Sums it all up quite nicely I thought.
“Average house prices in the UK vs average income ratio 3 -1 in the 1970s
Average house prices after 2000s = 10 -1
This has been mirrored across the globe.
What is driving this asset bubble and wage depreciation?
Financialization of the markets, destruction of large, medium, and small industries, and centralization. In other words “neo-liberalism” or more clearly – monopolistic corporate cronyism.
The status quo, all parties, and all sectors are subsumed in this public/private partnership mentality… everything is ruled by corporate ideology. The UN is partnered with the WEF, the WHO is too. The WEF is a big club of corporations and we aren’t in it.
These corporate entities have taken over the US. They are in the process of taking over the UK and other European countries. Our governments have no control over the trajectory of our countries…they are merely following WEF dictates to the UN and the WHO.
Under corporatism…we will own nothing (and rent everything from them) and “be happy”. That was one of the WEF predictions for 2030. Since scrubbed from the web because it was too jarring.
In order to prevent a monumental pushback and resistance they use the various terms of mis/dis/mal information etc, online harms and etc to shut down and criminalize it. Of course, the powers that shouldn’t be are also busy propagandizing their respective populations.
Keep and use cash.
Refuse Digital IDs.
Protest the shutdown of face-to-face services.
Throw out your Alexa and other “smart tech”.
Start growing a veg garden instead of just flower beds.
The climate is cooling and will be much cooler in the 30s-40s due to a weakening solar cycle… prepare for cooler and windier weather.
Resist the banning of coal and wood-burning fires. Resist the banning of gas boilers. Don’t buy EVs.
In the UK the next government is most likely going to be Labour… Sadly Labour has been totally captured and has a deep state operative at its helm so this agenda will swing into overdrive.”
Great post..
I tried to explain that to someone and they thought I was mad! They’d never heard of a stranded asset or that we’ll all be happy owning nothing. There are a lot of these people out there, sadly.
Sadly indeed.. but the process is very real.. and in France its being pushed aggressively..
Yep but we are on Agenda 2030 now. ——Notice how all of the Green stuff has to be done by 2030, like getting rid of petrol and diesel cars etc. —Our own politicians are going to impose this green tyranny on us because the UN says so. Isn’t it time we had politicians with some backbone that did not throw their own people under the bus so they can be eating caviar at Davos.
The Scottish Government is running a consultation for reform of EPC’s because it currently does not suit their own ends:
https://consult.gov.scot/energy-and-climate-change-directorate/energy-performance-certificate-reform-consultation/
Just a note that the “Energy Performance Certificate” is yet another nonsense on stilts adopted by ignorant and venal arts-grad politicians and their tame “experts”.
I await with bated breath, the “reforms” our Scots Nat genii propose.
The Scottish Government have consultations on many things and if the results aren’t what they want they just ignore them.
https://www.technocracy.news/global-warming-wef-calls-for-vastly-restricted-car-ownership-by-2050/
Worldwide car ownership will be reduced to one car per two people by 2050. That is 500 million cars shared by the remaining 1 billion people who remain alive on the planet by 2050.
On the one hand an infectious agent which has an overall IFR (infection fatality rate) of around one in a thousand (0.91%, https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid) – COVID19:
On that basis entire societies were shut down – mass house arrest and business closures, a generation of children denied proper education and socialisation, inadequately tested medical procedures enforced under the threat of sacking or legal sanctions etc etc;
On the other an infectious agent which has an IFR of c 10% – “About 1 out of every 10 people who gets sick with Legionnaires’ disease will die due to complications from their illness.” – ie 10,000 times more dangerous than the novel coronavirus.
https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/about/diagnosis.html#:~:text=About%201%20out%20of%20every,to%20complications%20from%20their%20illness.&text=For%20those%20who%20get%20Legionnaires,of%20every%204%20will%20die. –
Yet far from taking any ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’ (eg lockdowns etc) to ward off such a clearly catastrophic bug current government policy is to actively encourage its spread:
“The multi-millionaire, who owns a heat pump company, also warned they were noisy and only heated water to 54°C (129.2°F) – less than the 60°C recommended by the Health and Safety Executive to kill the legionella bacteria”.
This is not a conspiratorial / anti liberal democracy point – quite the opposite, democratic concepts and structures are what allow this sort of challenge in the first place – but rather a straightforward ideological and practical one.
I can’t see many politicians believing that. They don’t do proper science or common sense. They’ll blame the water companies most likely for Legionella being in the water …
Heat pumps were installed in the office I work in, an old stone building which had been comprehensively renovated.
Last winter, which wasn’t particularly cold, they had the heat pumps running full time and they had to be supported by several free-standing electric fan heaters to get the premises to an acceptable level of warmth to work in.
That’s in mild Dorset. They’ll be utterly useless in Scotland.
Good comment. Heat pumps and fan heaters, an essential combination. Both to be run from an electrical supply that the generation facilities that cannot meet the power requirements of, into a service infrastructure that is not big enough to meet current requirements let alone future ones.
I would suggest that the future “power rationing” will be biased towards large towns and cities, (more populated, therefore more voters) to the detriment of rural areas. But on the bright side the rewilding that will reduce the productivity of agriculture, will offer a source of materials to harvest to keep warm. Don’t brick up your chimney.
Since when did our Governments decide that they can tell us what sort of heating we have to use and if we can sell our houses or not?
This is a gross abuse of our Constitution.
They’ve given themselves the right, usually without reference even to parliament.
The principles of heat pumps have been around for over 200 years, solar and wind technology has been advanced for about 140 years, none as yet has met the cost effectiveness of their outputs to make them commercially viable. The only commercially viable product so far for heat pumps is refrigeration, the removal of heat from a controlled environment, an enclosed space for beer & food storage is one, only confirms there limitations. The limitations are noted as ie. under certain conditions, the perfect get out clause for any snake oil salesman.
About 3 weeks ago Grant Schapps (Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero) was asked on GB News “Are heat pumps any good” ————-Please pay attention to his answer which was this “I DON’T KNOW, BUT I WILL BE FINDING OUT SOON AS I HAVING ONE FITTED IN MY HOUSE” ———–In all of the absolute trash that comes from the mouths of squirming parasite politicians this has to one of the most absurd. Think about it—There are 23 million gas boilers in the UK and this imbecile and his silly government want rid of those and will replace them with a heat pump which they cannot say is any good. —-Insanity and Ideology trumping the most basic bit of common sense. But the Tories and Schapps are not alone…The whole political class are in on this impoverishment of their own citizens with NET ZERO as not a single one voted against it. —-Net Zero was simply waved through parliament with no questions asked.
We see all sorts of things being replaced by things that don’t work and things that might not work and things that don’t even yet exist.
So the very description ” heat, pumps” is a misnomer?
“meaning some properties with boilers will be barred from being put on the market.”
Perhaps then Patrick Harvie should be barred from living in his own house, due to it being looted and ‘on fire’ in a Sri Lankan style gift from the people.