Heat pumps are just another green pipe dream.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

  h/t Ian Magness

Another damning report on heat pumps:

Heat pumps are poorly suited to British homes and the Government’s relentless drive to install them will cause “uproar” across the country, energy leaders have warned.

The controversial devices have been adopted across Europe, but ministers are warned that Britain’s “geology, weather and culture” mean they will not work here.

Despite watering down a range of green policies last week, the Government is still proposing to ban the sale of new oil and gas boilers by 2035, part of a wider drive to reach legally-binding net zero goals by 2050.

It is urging households to install electrically powered heat pumps instead, but buying and installing one typically costs between £7,000 and £13,000.

Because take-up of government grants has been so poor, Rishi Sunak is now offering households even more money to agree to install one.

For now, there are fears that if heat pumps are pushed too hard on the British public there could be “significant resistance”.

Sarah Williams, deputy chief executive of gas distributor Wales and West Utilities, called the high price of heat pumps a “real challenge” for consumers, especially those on lower incomes.

She pointed to similar controversy in Germany over a ban on the sale of new gas boilers from 2024, dubbed the “heat hammer”, adding: “In the UK, any decision pushed upon consumers is likely to meet significant resistance.

“The challenge of mandating a heating system is that it’s not something that’s attractive or a status symbol, it’s simply a function of your home that you don’t think about.

“So the Government requiring 22 million homes to move to a heat pump is very likely to cause uproar across the UK.”

Heat pump rollout plans have already met fierce resistance, not least from rebellious Tory MPs. Caving to pressure, the Government has pushed back the ban on oil boilers from 2026 to 2035, and is now offering boiler upgrade exemptions to homes that are off the gas grid or that need costly electrical work to switch to a heat pump.

It comes after former environment secretary George Eustice warned that forcing 1.3 million rural households to ditch kerosene boilers would be “their own version of London’s Ulez.”

Even so, the push to install heat pumps in all other British homes remains. In 2021, the Government-funded Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project installed 742 heat pumps across the country with the pre-stated aim of proving the technology is viable in a range of properties. The study found that there is “no property type or architectural era that is unsuitable for a heat pump”.

However, Mike Foster, chief executive of the Energy Utilities Alliance, a trade body, insists that installing heat pumps across the board is “like pushing a square peg into a round hole”.

He says the UK’s unique geology, weather and culture make heat pumps fundamentally unsuitable in millions of older, poorly insulated houses.

He said: “Because of the Gulf Stream, our weather patterns aren’t as stable as they are in, say, Poland. We’ve historically built houses to cope with this fluctuation of temperature. Our habit is to interact with the weather far more than in other parts of Europe.

“A heat pump runs at a constant temperature 24/7. But in our climate, being able to turn on a gas boiler if it gets cold makes more sense.”

Meanwhile, Dr Jan Rosenow, director at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a clean energy NGO, warns that the Government is undermining its own efforts to make heat pumps commercially viable by failing to reform the way we tax energy.

He points to the relatively high price of electricity compared to gas in the UK as a “big factor” explaining low uptake compared to the rest of Europe.

“Historically the ratio has been higher in the UK than in many European countries because we put the policy costs on electricity,” he says.

“Recent price caps indicate that the spread is getting larger. This is one of the problems that the Government said two years ago they would address, by reforming how we allocate green levies and how we tax energy. But so far nothing has happened.”

The criticism comes after the Government announced it would increase the Boiler Upgrade Grant by 50pc to £7,500 to boost heat pump uptake, a tacit acceptance that the technology is not as popular as hoped.

Before the hike, a total of £150 million a year had been made available to offer £5,000 grants to households that install air source heat pumps and £6,000 grants for those that get ground source ones. But so far only 14,800 vouchers worth about £75 million have been redeemed, with the scheme now in its second year, according to figures published by regulator Ofgem.

The scheme, launched in May last year, has been branded an embarrassment by critics, with the vast majority of its budget going unspent.

Another idea being floated is to remove the current requirement for some properties to install insulation before a heat pump is fitted.

Mr Foster called the idea “ludicrous” and “a backward step”, adding: “Even advocates of heat pumps admit they need to be used in conjunction with insulation to be effective.

“It will lead to higher annual bills each and every year. The whole consultation seems to be an attempt to breathe life into a dying scheme.

“Whitehall officials and ministers bought the idea that heat pumps would be as cheap as boilers to install; they were warned by the industry this would not be the case.

The question puzzling the politicians pushing heat pumps on the public is why the technology remains so much less popular in the UK than the rest of Europe.

The UK installed just 55,000 heat pumps in 2022, far short of the Government’s target of 600,000 a year by 2028. France, by comparison, installed 621,000 last year.

In 2021, the devices made up just 2pc of all heating systems sold in the UK – the lowest share in Europe, according to the European Heat Pump Association.

Twenty other European countries also had higher installation rates than the UK. The highest ratio of heat pumps per household is in Norway (60pc), Sweden (43pc) and Finland (42pc).

The single biggest drawback putting consumers off is cost. The price of installing a new oil or gas boiler is around £4,000, according to the Energy Saving Trust, two to three times cheaper than a heat pump.

And while the Government’s relatively generous grants of up to £6,000 can make a big dent in this figure, installing a heat pump can also require an unknown number of costly electrical upgrades.

A government trial found that 81pc of homes fitting a heat pump needed a new cylinder and 93pc needed new radiators. If heat pumps were guaranteed to save you money once installed, persuading homeowners to sign up would be a lot easier.

But the technology is often more expensive to run than the “non-green” alternative, according to the Government’s own advisers.

The running cost of heat pumps is 10pc higher than that of an average gas boiler – equal to £100 more a year, according to a report by the Climate Change Committee, an independent adviser on tackling climate change. The study was from July 2022, when gas prices were at a record high.

Effective insulation is crucial for heat pumps to function optimally because the devices operate at lower temperatures than gas boilers. Yet around 25 million homes in Britain do not have sufficient insulation. As efficiency drops, the cost of running a heat pump relative to a gas boiler rises.

A heating professional who lives in a rural, mostly off-grid area in England and looks after predominantly oil central heating systems, says heat pumps are unsuited to many properties.

The engineer, who wished to remain anonymous, says: “I would like to dispel the biggest myth around heat pumps that some companies will tell you about money savings.

“Heat pumps are more expensive to run than oil heating and in some cases LPG [liquefied petroleum gas], depending on the property insulation levels and air leakage. In fact, oil heating remains the most cost-effective heating source available.

“The majority of rural and urban properties are not ready for heat pump installation until windows and insulation has been upgraded to its maximum level. Only at this point should you consider installing a heat pump.”

“Now they are panicking as the British public have sent them a very clear message: heat pumps currently cost too much to buy and run compared to a boiler.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/why-heat-pumps-will-never-work-britain-gas-boiler-net-zero/

This comment by Jan Rosenow is grossly misleading, and I am surprised the editors let it through:

Meanwhile, Dr Jan Rosenow, director at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a clean energy NGO, warns that the Government is undermining its own efforts to make heat pumps commercially viable by failing to reform the way we tax energy.

He points to the relatively high price of electricity compared to gas in the UK as a “big factor” explaining low uptake compared to the rest of Europe.

“Historically the ratio has been higher in the UK than in many European countries because we put the policy costs on electricity,” he says.

“Recent price caps indicate that the spread is getting larger. This is one of the problems that the Government said two years ago they would address, by reforming how we allocate green levies and how we tax energy. But so far nothing has happened.”

The environmental levies he refers to are neither “tax” or “policy costs”. They are subsidies paid out to renewable generators, and thus reflect the true cost of producing that electricity.

Simply taxing gas and subsidising the price of electricity in order to persuade people to buy heat pumps would make no sense. Once we all stop using gas, the levies would have to be added back to our electricity bills anyway.