By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Trust Emma Gatten to be writing this nonsense!

Up to 20 per cent of running costs are green and social taxes

Heat pump users should be given tax breaks on their energy bill to encourage take up, the Treasury has been urged by lenders and energy companies.

Higher running costs have been identified as one of the reasons for low take up of heat pumps, which the Government is favouring to replace gas boilers to help meet net zero goals.

Up to 20 per cent of the running costs are green and social taxes, including payments for wind farms and subsidies for fuel for poor homes.

Sixteen organisations, including Nationwide and energy giant EDF, have written to the Treasury calling on them to remove these levies from a proportion of the energy bill for electrically heated homes.

This would include around 250,000 homes using heat pumps and another 2.3 million that use direct electric heating such as radiators.

The UK has one of the lowest heat pump installation rates in Europe, with just 69,000 installed in 2021, well below the Government target for 600,000 by 2028

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/give-heat-pump-users-tax-break-bills-encourage-uptake

For a start, silly little Emma, these are neither green nor social taxes. Get a grip and call them what they really are – subsidies for renewables. As these form part of the cost of electricity, they belong in the price of electricity, not gas, or for that matter anything else.

The idea that people are suddenly going to go out and spend fifteen grand on a heat pump, just to save £130 is absurd.

Still it is good to see that they are now admitting that heat pumps are dearer to run than a gas boiler, something I have been pointing out for ages.

If a subsidy of £7500 is not enough to persuade people to buy, maybe it is time to drop the whole absurd agenda.