Harrabin Promotes Home Insulation
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
I’m not quite sure why the BBC’s Environmental Analyst is reporting on economic matters!
Needless to say, it is yet another totally uncritical puff piece.
Making people’s homes cosy is the cheapest way to create jobs as the UK prepares to fight recession, a report says.
Its authors say a job insulating homes would be much cheaper than creating a road maintenance job, for example.
Jobs in building roads are more costly to create, as the work is heavily mechanised.
The figures will be sent to the Treasury, which is reviewing a package of job stimulus measures for July.
The report’s authors say a job in home insulation can be created for £59,000 – that’s far less than a road maintenance job, which is estimated by the government to be more than £250,000.
Those figures include retrofitting 10 homes with insulation, and the road surface laid by a worker.
The report comes from a coalition of charities, businesses and pressure groups known as the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group (EEIG).
Their aim is to upgrade the UK’s aged housing stock.
They say home insulation would create jobs in all areas of the UK as well as supporting the government’s aim of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Green jobs
It would also have other benefits. It would cut local pollution; reduce bills to release cash back into the economy; and lower the costs of sickness caused by draughty homes.
The document estimates that 40,000 jobs could be created by the government in insulation over the next two years, and 150,000 by 2030.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52999337
Needless to say, the EEIG is largely a group of vested interests. But what Harrabin ignores is that somebody will have to pay for this largesse.
At £59,000 a job, 40,000 jobs will cost £2.4bn a year, rising to £8.8bn by 2030.
To compare with road maintenance workers is ludicrous. It is all about the economic return. Infrastructure spending, including roads, is always subject to rigorous cost benefit analysis by the Treasury, and new road building projects will have a very clear economic benefit.
In any event, the idea that we should avoid building roads because it involves mechanisation is the economics of the luddite madhouse. As Milton Friedman once commented, after asking why a canal was being dug with shovels instead of tractors:
“Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
So, what benefit will all of this insulation bring? Put another way, would the energy savings be enough to persuade householders to fund the cost themselves? The failure of the government’s Green Deal suggests not.
According to the BBC report, each £59,000 job should insulate 10 homes a year, so £5900 each.
The EEIG report claims annual savings of £7.5bn by 2030:
However, a closer look shows that this claimed saving does not relate purely to insulation. Instead the saving is based on a whole range of energy efficiency options, notably heat pumps which account for half of the saving. (This energy saving does not reflect the capital cost of installing heat pumps, nor does it seem to take account of the fact that natural gas is about a fifth of the price of electricity).
Other factors also account for energy savings, including lighting, controls, behaviour, appliances and boilers.
The EEIG’s calculations come from 2018 study by Rosenow et al, from which the chart below comes:
At best, energy savings due to “fabric” are not much above 10% of energy bills, and if the insulation is done on a cost-effective basis, the saving comes down to about 5%.
Even at the 10% level, this only equates to about £130 per home. This does not seem unreasonable, given that average heating costs for those with gas central heating is probably in the region of about £400 a year.
But the comparison does not end there, as these fabric improvements include include a whole range of items, such as double glazing, solid wall and floor insulation, the cost of which would put them well beyond a budget of £5900.
Given a budget of £5900, I doubt whether annual savings would even be as much as £100, making the outlay totally uneconomic.
In terms of the macro economics, while getting unemployed back to work may have attractions in the short term, in the long run the plan would act as a brake on the national economy, simply drawing money, labour and resources away from more productive uses.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yet more brown envelopes maintaining the AGW fiction?
Ausralian ALP…in typical Idiot Leftist fashion set up a Home Insulation Scheme to set up economic activity as a result of GFC…about 2009/10
ACTING Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is sorry for the way the Rudd government handled its home insulation scheme, after a coroner found the rush in rolling it out played a role in the deaths of three tradesmen.
The Queensland tradesmen were electrocuted in 2009 and 2010 while installing roofing batts as part of the former Rudd government’s controversial home insulation scheme, since discontinued.
Queensland coroner Michael Barnes on Thursday said the rushed economic stimulus program in response to the global financial crisis had put the economy ahead of human safety.
“Because a major focus of this program was the stimulation of the economy to counter the effects of the global financial crisis it needed to proceed far more quickly than that, but not at the cost of human life,” he said.
Mr Albanese was asked if he, as acting prime minister, would apologise for the way the program was handled by the Rudd government. He said he accepted the coroner’s findings but would not be drawn on possible consequences for the federal government….
Naturally there were NONE.
It’s yet another scheme designed to reduce productivity to third world level. Hopefully the Treasury will see the scam for what it is, but I wouldn’t place money on it.
Just like the pink bats in Australia. Hear much about them nowadays.
There’s a link-within-a-link in a previous thread:
https://www.icax.co.uk/Absolute_Zero_Report.html
The first of the Key Messages is:
“Absolute Zero creates a driver for tremendous growth in industries related to electrification, from material supply, through generation and storage to end-use. The fossil fuel, cement, shipping and aviation industries face rapid contraction, while construction and many manufacturing sectors can continue at today’s scales, with appropriate transformations.”
But in the discussion they admit:
“… the most difficult problem is cement: making cement releases emissions regardless of how it’s powered, there are currently no alternative options available at scale, and we don’t know how to install new renewables or make new energy efficient buildings without it.”
These are supposedly intelligent, clever people, but common sense seems not to be a requirement.
“… the most difficult problem is cement”
BioRock or Seacrete. Basically passing a current through seawater causing the accretion of a hard mineral layer, which just keeps getting bigger. Since the mineral layer is harder than concrete, and has a steel structure (electrode) in the middle, it’s an ideal CO2 free building material. And, as an aside, an ideal dump for excess electricity that doesn’t care if the power is intermittent.
This could be a huge revenue opportunity for Scotland! (they could probably make out it is even if it isn’t – after all, there must be a reason we can’t buy blocks of it in B&Q, but that never stopped daft ideas as Paul’s post shows)
Surely the use of seawater will mean that chloride ions will be incorporated in the structure, leading eventually, and when in use in a high rise building or bridge, to corrosion of the reinforcing rods, unless stainless alloys are used as the electrodes. However it is an interesting suggestion, thank you Stuart, and I looked it up on Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorock
In natural seawater the process grows “concrete” at the rate of , at most 1.5Kg per KWH. It would be interesting to compare the carbon footprint with conventional concrete from cement at different ratios of renewable to convential power generation of the electricity used.
But you don’t have to use seawater, a calcium/ magnesium bicarbonate , solution with other elctrolyts might work . Wish I had access to a Lab again.
I’m sure that if Harrabin wasn’t at the British Brainwashing Corporation, he’d be at British Pravda, aka The Grauniad.
Will somebody who does twatter please tell Harrabin to go and Google Bastiat and his parable of the broken window.
I was going to do a broken d/g window gag, but lost the will……..
Once loft insulation is done, there is no way to simply insulate old housing stock. Every house has to be treated individually, it’s very technical, skilled, disruptive, and expensive – else you create numerous problems – old houses were designed to breathe. £8500 per house is hopelessly optimistic – I’d say £20-40k to do it properly and sympathetically on an average sized house.
The unskilled slap dash approach to cavity wall insulation has already caused lots of problems with damp etc.
And of course once you insulate to the nines, you then need to install expensive complex ventilation systems with heat recovery, else the heat’s still lost, or you die of poor air quality and mold spore infections – some choice!
76% of the housing stock was double glazed by a decade ago, it must be 85%+ now.
Replacing old d/g with the latest spec. will make minuscule savings and makes no economic sense. Remaining single glazed properties probably include a large proportion of historic ones, and the only option will be expensive bespoke internal secondary glazing.
I doubt there are more than a handful of not insulated hot water tanks left in the UK, Part L has applied for years and they come pre-insulated with fixed expanding foam.
The whole list just represents out of touch/out of date/unrealistic thinking.
Well said, most of our housing stock was built before 1980 and were heated by solid fuel, they then blocked of the flues put in combi boilers and double glazing, wall and loft insulation, the resultant “thermal shock” is still a major problem today, nowhere for the moisture to go except condense within the building causing mold.
Try telling the occupants to open some windows.!
Open some windows? Are you trying to kill the economy? Surely what is needed is a top of the range Dyson dehumidifier
A better idea; divide all the people who have lost their jobs as a result of the sledgehammer the government has taken to the economy into two groups; have the first group dig holes in the ground, then instruct the second group to follow behind, filling in the holes dug by the first group….problem solved!
A point about LEDs lamps which their fairytale table says last 27.4 years. I have a ceiling light fitting that takes G9 lamps. Although it is an open fitting, the length of the lamp is important to the effect it creates and LED lamps are usually longer. Having found a shorter LED I find that these lamps last less than a year and if I was to estimate hours I would probably have to say that they were barely making 100 hours life as the light is not used very often. At least they are not as expensive as LED lamps used to be but if you have a fixed LED fitting that has to be binned if the LED fails you might be a bit unhappy if they have a much shorter life than 27.4 years. I tend to avoid such lights.
“If you have a fixed LED fitting that has to be binned if the LED fails you might be a bit unhappy if they have a much shorter life than 27.4 years”
I’ve just replaced an outside LED light fitting that I installed 2 years ago. I’m sure you can guess where it was made…
Erm, oooh, erm, C possibly, and then maybe…..H….
As an additional note, I had a GU10 fail in my kitchen a few weeks back. That hasn’t lasted 27.4 years either as they didn’t make them that long ago….
I also had some CFLs die in around 2 years including one that took the circuit fuse with it. They were in a fitting that trapped heat which shows that as some have said they have a small temperature operating window.
Excellent response. If they are so concerned with saving energy why don’t they change building regulations for new homes to include more insulation and triple glazing.
New build energy saving/insulation regs. are already tough and undoubtedly getting tougher, new gas boilers will not be allowed, air/ground source electric heating will be mandatory – if not already, in the near future. The vast majority of existing houses are inefficient (as far as their grand master plan sees it). That’s why they are stuck trying to compel homeowners to insulate expensively for no possible financial return. That’s what the energy performance certs are about – you can’t rent unless you meet a minimum level – to be ever increasing, soon you won’t be allowed to sell or get a mortgage I expect.
The UK meja, led by the BBC, are well underway with a massive re-launch of Climate Change Brainwashing. They are, unfortunately, very close to winning the war.
The tragedy of all this is that there is no debate allowed of the “proven science”. Even the “1.5 deg K rise limit” is now becoming enshrined as a “tipping point” in the current blasts for the (postponed by one year) COP 26 meeting, and the UK’s “leading role” in carbon reduction.
It is difficult to see how anyone is going to manage to raise the issue for proper discussion when all of the mass meja are refusing access and publishing downright lies continually.
I don’t mean to denigrate road builders (and God knows we need them), but £250k to train one??? Come on – that’s more the realm of a skilled technician, than some poor sod who lays kerb stones, or rakes hot tarmacadam level…
No, that’s the average cost pa of one worker, which includes all of the machinery and materials he uses, plus presumably land etc.
So if a new stretch of road costs £10m all in, and it used 40 man years to build it, the cost per head is £250,000
They do realise the millions of insulation slabs we will need are made in China will outlawed blowing agents, with ‘ozone destroying’ and ‘powerful greenhouse effect’ properties, don’t they?
Lets just open the floodgates to predatory building practises once again. Anyone remember the double glazing scams of the 70’s/80’s?
Apart from which, Dr. Michael Kelly tells us, we simply don’t have the physical manpower to convert the best part of 16m homes. Never mind the cost, at between £75,000 and £100,000 per home.
The banks will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of all those new mortgages. The problem being though, on a semi detached worth, say, £300,000 that money will never be recovered by the householder and the housing market will nose dive.
It would also be interesting to see the numbers on how many people actually fall sick from “draughty homes” syndrome, and those who die from hypothermia because they have only two choices – heat or eat!
Of course, we all know this proposal has nothing whatsoever to do with Coronavirus. It’s just used as smoke and mirrors to disguise their desire for profit derived from Crony Capitalism.
‘Draughty’ homes are actually a good thing as it helps to disperse such things as flu or covid.
What happens when houses are tightly sealed in order to retain heat as heat pumps will only be effective when the house has excellent heat retention properties i.e. when little air from outside is allowed to enter.. Surely better insulation is therefore in some ways. a health issue of its own if taken too far?
House air is already usually more polluted than city/traffic air, a point the “OMG Xmillion are dying from air pollution” brigade like to forget.
As I said above, you need to install ventilation systems to compensate, which need heat-recovery technology – else you might as well open the window!
And of course with well insulated houses, you increasingly need to also install expensive air conditioning for summer, which you then need more energy to run.
The whole plan is just a death spiral of diminishing returns turning into exponential expenditure for no return whatsoever.
It’s a great plan to tank the economy, not revive it.
How about digging holes and filling them in again? Really cheap jobs, cost two shovels…
“…two shovels…”
No. Make it two workers on one shovel.
The man points out a spot and the woman digs there (I believe this scheme of management is in the Book of Genesis).
A blue-collar job AND a white-collar job.
Naturally, the man will be paid more, and so he will be accounted the greater contributor to GDP.
Late spring snow in Greenland:
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
“No. Make it two workers on one shovel”
How will they maintain social distancing?
Oh Lord, please give me strength! Have these people really not worked out that the “cost ” of a job is linked to the value of that job? And so we have no need of “cheap” jobs because the supposedly “expensive ” jobs generate value that pays for it. Why do we have the economy run by people who literally do not understand basic economics?
“Why do we have the economy run by people who literally do not understand basic economics?”
If they knew what they were doing, then they might have a clue of how much to charge for their lies. This way whoever is telling them what to say gets a bargain. Yet another “cheap job” I guess?
I can’t get past the horror inspired by that photo. I’m pretty sure that is NOT how to cut a piece of styrofoam.
So many things wrong with that picture.
You usually don’t cut styrofoam, you score it and snap it. If you use a saw, you don’t use one with teeth that will rip it to shreds, and certainly not a hand saw. Cutting the foam makes dust, for which one had better wear at least a mask, or better still a respirator if he’s doing a lot of cutting. Also, the piece looks like it’s “finished,” in that it has either a plastic or metal piece attached (how?) on top. Try cutting either plastic or metal with that rusty thing – never cut either that clean. And, if it was finished (for what, I can’t imagine), why is he hacking it to bits? There’s more, but …. arrrggghh!
So, if my observations are even remotely close, do I want to take insulation advice from an author who thinks that’s how to handle insulation during construction? I don’t think so.
Anyone in the business? Feel free to correct any mistakes I might have made. (NOTE – I did some quick research, …possibly more than the BBC did, it seems.)
in my experience most home insulation causes serious problems of condensation and rot. The only insualtioin that really works is extra clothing.
Another example of Harrabin’s lack of knowledge about matters energy. I’m sure it was the chart that lists “controls behaviour appliances” – which I note are just a limited ambition – that set his pulses racing. Flailing ourselves with uneconomic nonsense seems to be the scourge of our times.
I noted that heat pump economics were based on a 2013 paper, which I tracked down here:
Click to access Frontier-Economics-Element-Energy-Pathways-to-high-penetration-of-heat-pumps.pdf
Yes, that’s Deben’s Climate Change Committee who sponsored it. Odd that there isn’t anything more up to date. There are some choice euphemisms in the executive summary:
So it’s back to controlling behaviour appliances…
Have you noticed we are now living through a period of continual mass hysteria. Climate Change and Net Zero promoted by the Government, Boris and his useless green activist partner. Chinese flu created by Boris and his useless muppet Ministers along with the BBC and the rest of the media. BLM and the destruction of our history by a hysterical mob.and now Labour Councils against our history with slavery, although they forget to recognise the modern day slavery conducted in Middle East, China and African colbalt mines, and that the Guardian started with an owner who supported the Confederates and hated Abraham Lincoln. In this Boris is notable by his absence probably due to his activist partner supporting BLM. Don’t know if this is a fact, but it looks like it to me.
In other words we now have an absolutely useless Government driving mass hysteria which through their actions and lack of them will wreck and drive this Country into the ground.
And I voted Tory. Never again.
Keith – same here in Australia but we are not alone! There is a massive undercurrent that Farage in the UK could use to take over. How sweet would that be for the BBC, Facebook and assorted media luvvies, bring it on.
In Australia the conservatives are just as clueless, Labour are even worse. I personally will vote for one of the “Far right” parties and our media will say they do not understand!
Thank you Keith. That saved me a lot of typing. I agree with every word, to the very end.
Agreed, Keith, except for blaming Boris for the Chinese plague.
It’s too difficult to vote again for this “Conservative” party, but where else to go?
My preferred leader is John Redwood: any comments, anyone?
A friend of mine, who lives in a rented, rural housing association owned property in England, recently had his electric storage heating system replaced by his landlords. The original storage heating system was 30 years old and extremely expensive to run. It has been replaced with an air sourced external heat pump system, with assurances that his electricity bills would be slashed. So far, so good.
The new system, costing approx £12k, was installed at no cost to my pal. The landlords benefit from a RHI payment from HMG for the installation and running of this new ‘green’ system. My pal just has to pay the bills. Unfortunately, the property does not benefit from adequate insulation or glazing to compliment the new system. The cost of properly retrofitting the house to insulate it adequately was estimated (off the record) by the installers of the new system, to be in the region of £60k. The landlords baulked at the cost. The bottom line is, he now has a new heating system that generates less hot water and less heat than the inefficient and expensive heating system than it replaced and has yet to notice any difference in his heating bills. And, he’s yet to experience a proper winter under the new system.
Air sourced heat pumps are not renowned for their highly efficient performance in poorly insulated properties, particularly when it gets cold. My friend is extremely keen that man made global warming keeps ramping up otherwise he’ll be freezing his nuts off this winter!
Yes £60k as opposed to £8500 suggested above? Sounds much more like it.
Of course the daft thing is if you insulated your house to the standard required to make heat pumps effective, you could keep warm by boiling a kettle once a day and leaving it in the middle of the house (well almost).
None of this makes sense to the sane.
My house in the South of France has an efficient air con unit which reverses in winter as a heat pump. Do do neighbours. The house is insulated with foam board on walls and roof. Between October and May it doesn’t work sufficiently and a gas or paraffin heater and electric convector is necessary. If the government is giving out grants for air heat pumps without a major insulation and heat exchanger installation at the same time, the householders will be left with bigger bills.
In Scotland, there’s legislation that penalises landlords for renting properties that don’t have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of ‘E’ or better, from 1st October 2020. Why do I care? I’m close to retirement, and when I do I would like then to rent our old Victorian terraced house out whilst me and my better half spend a year or two in Italy and Spain before we’re too knackered. I enquired via my MSP as to what I would likely need to do to meet the regulations, as I’m about to do some renovations, and it should be easy to incorporate anything extra at the time. The answer was worthless, merely quoting the legislation. Apparently I have to hire at my own expense some dweeb with a lap-top loaded with the (politically) correct software to tell me what the EPC of my house is. If it fails the test, I can’t rent my house out without paying a fine. Surely, in a free country, I’d be able to offer my (only) house for rent, show the potential tenant the last year’s energy bills, and do any deal that suits me and the would-be tenant. But, no. The bureaucrats have decided that this must be made subject to possible fines in the name of ‘saving the planet’.
I’m finding it harder and harder to contain my rage when in company with folk who are ‘on board ‘ with all this guff.
Yep, as I mentioned, similar in rest of UK.
https://www.landlordsguild.com/changes-to-epc-regulations-2013/
I have a rental property which is a Victorian solid walled four bedroom terraced house and have insulated it and own similar house using a multifoil, battens and foil backed plasterboard on the walls and 370mm quilt in the roof and under the ground floor. The chimneys are blocked at roof level and a draught lobby is on the front door with a triple skin polycarbonate conservatory on the back. The matetials cost under £3,000 and I did the work myself. The heating bills halved and the certificate on the rental house cost about £100 and it passed grade E. The previous problems with damp condensation and mould have disappeared. Fitting external insulation would be impossible on this type of house.
There’s a law of diminishing returns and if I doubled the insulation and fitted air exchangers to enable an air heat pump to work, it would cost more to build and heat. The ministry seems to exist to waste money and wreck the economy.
PS. The work was done before the building regulations were tightened and now I would have to fit 175 mm Styrofoam insulation and lose floor area at far greater cost. For a fat fee for the inspection and approval. As the work is internal, many owners do it on the quiet.
When will this madness end . I loathe fibre glass loft insulation which is now packed to the rafters of most pensioners homes. As a Gas Safe plumbing and heating engineer I’m more or less forced to inhale this evil stuff every other day of the week .
£60k plus the £12k heat pump system on a bog standard late 1980s constructed, smallish 3 bedroom house to get the system up to efficiency. When one thinks of the millions of older properties in the U.K. the mind boggles at the cost of retrofitting the national housing stock, never mind where the electricity is going to come from to power them. Not to mention, the cost and personnel involved in training the retrofitters, the actual installation process and in acquiring the materials to retrofit. (No fossil fuels involved in that, surely?) Bonkers!
Excuse me if I am mistaken but according to Harraharrabinbin and his cronies we have runaway global warming caused by your’s truly among others …..so the obvious question is “if” he truly believes that then what on earth is he promoting home insulation, unless of course Harraharrabinbin is a thick as whale omelette and missed the cow pat he just stepped in!
Jobs in building roads are more costly to create, as the work is heavily mechanised.
So get rid of the machines and employ loads of workers to do everything with picks and shovels. Jobs galore. Next!
Harrabin has obviously not heard of the “pink batts” debacle in Australia !
As I have posted numerous times contractors refuse to cavity insulate most older properties because the do not comply with the building regulation that there must be two courses of bricks showing below the DPC. That’s from personal experience.
does roger sell double glazing too?
I can remember when Tony Benn was the Minster for Technology under Wilson and inaugurated his ‘white heat of technology’ push and wanted to insulate all homes. Back then – it could have been a fore-runner of Booker – someone calculated that it would cost more energy to make the insulation than it would ever save. But it’s OPM, isn’t it?
Couple of things of note. WUWT has an excellent video on energy use and costs. Worth 20 minutes of your time to watch. The presenter is German and mentions their particular brand of lunacy including that without interconnectors their grid would have collapsed last Christmas as demand outstripped their supply with solar non-existent and wind not much better.
Following that theme, GWPF has a piece saying 5000 windfarms will stop receiving taxpayer cash handouts come the end of the year and won’t be able to compete at the current low rates. What I hear you cry? Isn’t renewable energy so cheap it should be the only game in town, so says the Guardian, BBC, AEP, Silly Jilly et al.
Farming without fossil fuels – impossible, massive food price inflation, famine.
Just as it has been shown in the real world that battery buses are completely impractical and many times the cost of a normal one, battery powered tractors with their extremely high work demand would be even more hopeless. Much of planting and harvesting has to be done in weather windows, at the drop of a hat. UK farmers often work on lights all through the night if the crop is dry enough and rain is due – that would be impossible with battery powered machinery. Imagine watching the crop ruin as your combine is on charge.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-11/venezuela-on-brink-of-famine-with-fuel-too-scarce-to-sow-crops
He can’t report greenland gaining unprecedented amounts of ice at a time when it should have started losing it or 10cm of June snow in Ontario can he?
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/parts-of-northwestern-ontario-receive-10-cm-of-june-snow-5-photos-2427376
Didn’t he start as a local football reporter?
See – a lack of knowledge is no handicap when you’re a BBC analyst.