By Paul Homewood
h/t Mr GrimNasty
Well some of us have been pointing this out for a while!
Electricity is too expensive to make heat pumps worthwhile, MPs have warned, as they urged the government to rethink environmental costs passed onto customers.
The high cost of electricity compared to gas risk putting people off ditching their gas boiler for the cleaner alternative, which runs on electricity, the Environmental Audit Committee said.
In a letter to Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, Philip Dunne, chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee, said high electricity bills are a “significant barrier to heat pump adoption”.
Electricity is around four times more expensive than gas because of costs passed onto the consumer from environmental programmes and social measures such as the Warm Homes Discount, which gives some households cheaper energy bills. These extra costs are not added to gas bills.
Figures from Ofgem show that environmental and social costs make up 23 per cent of the average electricity bill and just two per cent of the average gas bill.
Last month the committee heard calls from some witnesses to add carbon taxes to gas in order to incentivise switching.
MCS, which certifies installers of renewable energy, said the government should price out gas and oil from the market by adding a carbon tax to fossil fuels used for heating.
Emma Pinchbeck, the chief executive of trade association Energy UK, said that “all the price signals in the market point to a gas boiler as being the most sensible technology to install.”
“One of the reasons that heat pumps are not coming out and being able to compete with gas, despite being cheaper to operate, is essentially to do with Government decisions around policy, taxation and where costs fall in the economy,” she said.
In fact Emma Pinchbeck, who used to run the lobbyist Renewable UK, is being extremely dishonest when she says:
One of the reasons that heat pumps are not coming out and being able to compete with gas, despite being cheaper to operate, is essentially to do with Government decisions around policy, taxation and where costs fall in the economy
The fact that electricity costs five times as much as gas has nothing to do with “taxation”. Nor does the Warm Homes Discount make much difference, as this only amounts to £400 million a year:
Strangely Emma does not mention the obscene costs of subsidising renewable energy, which get added on to electricity bills to the tune of £12bn a year.
But the major reason why electricity is so much more expensive is that it is fundamentally an inefficient way of providing energy.
It makes far more sense after all to burn natural gas in your home for heating, than burn it in a gas power station to generate power, which then has to be distributed through a transmission network, involving more cost and energy loss.
And, as we know, gas power generation is still the cheapest source of electricity.
She also makes the ridiculous claim that heat pumps are cheaper to operate. The whole reason why nobody wants them is that they are far more expensive to operate, regardless of renewable subsidies.
That is why the eco-loons now want to add a carbon tax to natural gas.
Sadly the dopey Olivia Rudgard, the Environmental Correspondent who wrote this claptrap, does not appear to understand any of this.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
December 22, 2020 at 06:42AM