From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

May 31, 2023 by oldbrew

Air source heat pump

Does the phrase ‘climate targets’ ring any bells? This article says: ‘Germans are in open revolt against the ‘heat hammer’ – Britain must take note’. All should be aware there are more unwelcome policies like that in the pipeline.
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Ah Germany, land of economic resilience, political consensus, low debt, social compliance, manufacturing prowess, beer gardens and lederhosen.

But for how much longer? – asks Jeremy Warner @ The Telegraph.

Alone among G7 advanced economies, Germany has recently slipped into recession, and hard though it may be to believe, the Government is in some danger of being toppled by, of all things, a mass revolt against heat pumps.

Germany has long had a problem with energy policy; so utterly destructive has its machinations become that it makes our own failings in this department – which are myriad – look like a paragon of common sense by comparison.

Boilergeddon, or what Germans have labelled the “heat hammer”, is just the latest, farcical example of the destructive chaos that the unthinking and unmitigated pursuit of environmental goals has unleashed on the German economy.

To reach its climate change targets, Germany’s coalition government had been planning to bring in a new law that would ban the installation of new gas and oil fired boilers from the beginning of next year onwards.

The upshot is not just a mad dash among households to install traditional gas fired boilers while they still can, but a collapse in the Government’s poll ratings and an increasingly acrimonious standoff between two of the coalition partners – the Greens and the more enterprise friendly Free Democrats.

Energy policy is not the only issue on which they are at loggerheads. Far from it, with the very foundations of Germany’s postwar economic success and affluence seemingly collapsing beneath their feet. But it is the most high profile.

As a foretaste of what may be to come in the UK, which is planning a similar ban for new-build houses the year after next, and is considering a blanket prohibition on all properties from 2035 onwards, the German experience in attempting to impose heat pumps on an ever more reluctant population makes for particularly alarming reading.

Generally ineffective and often fiendishly expensive both to install and to run, heat pumps have been widely branded an unacceptable obligation among German voters, who are up in arms at the idea of being compelled to buy them.

Such has been the ferocity of public reaction to Germany’s “heat hammer” that a grovelling climbdown now looks likely.

Full article here.