A Ban On Gas Boilers Is Yet Another Pointless Eco-Catastrophe
By Paul Homewood
Successive governments have got away with adding ten billion a year to our energy bills, without us noticing. They may now even get away with forcing us all into driving EVs.
But the ban on gas boilers could turn out to be the next government’s version of the poll tax, which brings the whole climate change house of cards tumbling down.
Ross Clark writes:
Has the Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) been seized by one of those gangs which promises to tarmac your driveway for £50 and then, when it has finished its shoddy work, tells you, no, you misheard: £50 was the price per square foot? In its Sixth Carbon Budget, published yesterday, the CCC claims the cost of turning Britain carbon neutral by 2050 has plummeted. It is now going to cost “just” £50 billion a year by 2030. And eventually that is all going to be cancelled out by lower fuel bills, anyway, so it will be free.
If something sounds too good to be true, you can be pretty sure it is. Remember David Cameron’s Green Deal, introduced in 2013 to offer loans for energy improvements, the net cost of which would be zero because they would save more money than they cost? It was abandoned two years later when it became clear that improvements weren’t going to save nearly enough money to repay the loans. A National Audit Office report concluded that the scheme had cost the taxpayer £17,000 per loan, with negligible reduction in carbon emissions.
Now, central to the Climate Change Committee’s ambitions are our homes, in particular a proposed ban on the sale of all new gas boilers by 2033 and oil boilers – relied upon by people in rural areas – by 2028.
It is right to build new homes to high energy efficiency standards, but it is sadly all too easy to predict the result of a rushed scheme to retrofit all existing homes to make them zero carbon. Homeowners will be fleeced, left with damp, chilly homes. Worse, the costs are bound to fall disproportionately on the lowest- income homeowners.
Some homes, says the CCC, may be heated with hydrogen – even though the technology to produce clean hydrogen has yet to be proven on a commercial scale. In most cases, though, the CCC wants gas boilers to be replaced with electric heat pumps. But these cost a lot more: between £6,000 and £16,000 for a typical air-source heat pump, according to Which.
But if you live in one of Britain’s nine million older homes with solid walls, that is just the beginning. Heat pumps operate on lower water temperatures than gas boilers. To heat a home effectively you may need to install much larger radiators and insulate the walls, too. Solid wall insulation, again according to Which estimates, comes in at £7,400 if stuck on the inside (which makes all the rooms smaller) and £13,000 if stuck on the outside. Damp is another potential hazard: cover an old house, built without a damp course, with cladding and insulation and you are asking for trouble.
The CCC puts a timetable of 10-15 years on bringing all homes up to a grade “C” level on an Energy Performance Certificate. Where, other than the bands of cowboy contractors who will already be smacking their lips, does it think we are going to find the required workforce?
And if you can’t pay to upgrade your home? The CCC wants the sale of all new homes which don’t come up to standard to be banned from 2028, and mortgages on them to be stopped from 2033. In other words, if you can’t spend thousands to upgrade your home, you won’t be able to sell it or continue paying a mortgage. Yes, a government quango is proposing a policy which would lead to mass repossessions.
Energy efficiency and cutting carbon emissions are noble aims, but when it comes to climate change reason seems to go out of the window. All economic and social concerns are subjugated to this one target: reaching net zero emissions by 2050. We’ve seen it with diesel cars – encouraged in spite of causing deadly nitrogen oxide emissions. We’ve seen it with electric cars, which are going to be the only option from 2030, in spite of scant evidence that their cost will have come down and their battery range improved sufficiently by then.
It is easy to set targets, quite another to come up with practical measures to implement them at reasonable cost and without damaging side effects. The CCC is very enthusiastic for the former, while doing little to prove that it has achieved the latter.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Quite a well balanced clear article apart from the “Deadly nitrogen oxide emissions”; this is technical hype, as evidenced by the data during lock-down. The comments about heat pumps and house insulation are good, but air-source heat pumps will not be much use in the Scottish highlands in winter, their COP will fall to about 1.5 and not produce usable water temperatures for domestic used, effectively the houses will be fully electrically heated in winter and the heat pumps will only be used in autumn and spring.
This issue then leads to the winter heat load which will need massive electrical generation and transmission systems that we do not have and will not have in that time-scale.
The Scottish Highlands may need the heat pumps in the Summer as well! 🙂
Indeed – a policy with no joined up thinking. Gas is very effective and efficient for heating homes and offices.
Converting any house to a heat pump is a big job plus a significant increase in electrical power usage to drive the pumps. A mentioned event if a pump is installed they are best for underfloor heating. They only make sense for new house builds. A mass conversion project is madness on unproven technology.
Boris is barking.
As someone who ran a small building business in the past I can assure anyone who thinks that owners of solid wall houses will happily fit internal insulation to their house for a grant of a few thousand pounds, they are sadly mistaken. To do such work to a proper standard would involve putting all furniture in storage and moving into rented accommodation for several months. All character features would be destroyed as the entire interior of the house was gutted with wiring and plumbing renewed plus a full redecoration, new floor finishes, kitchens and bathrooms etc.. Say about £80,000 upwards, except that there would be a total shortage of skilled labour and building materials causing costs to rocket. It’s just not going to happen! External insulation is less disruptive but there are many technical problems related to damp ingress, flashing, rainwater and sewage pipes all requiring top grade architectural detail design and use of highly skilled craftsmen already in short supply. Anyone using a lesser standard of contractor will enjoy years of problems from defective workmanship. Don’t even think about it!
You are absolutely right. I was going to make a similar comment. I had a large, by London standards, detached house built in 1935. It had solid single walls with no cavity insulation. Being detatched, I could have build a second outter wall and insulated the 10 to 12 inch gap with the latest standard insulation, but in addition, the windows would have had to have been refitted, and inside new sills etc, outdoor plumbing and drainage would have required adjustment. The roof would have either had to be remade, or some extended eaves produced and would have made the appearance strange.
The alternative woiuld have been to a created a second wall inside but this would cause a considerable loss of space, perhaps a foot on each wall so that a through lounge would be 2 feet shorter, and one foot less wide, and again as you mention there would not simply be redecoration, but rewiring, re plumming, refitting of radiatiators, kitchen and bathroom, and new sills for each window etc.
As you say, it could easily cost upwards of GBP80,000 to insulate to required standards. Paul
cites figures from Tradesmen Costs but these figures must be based on levels of insulation that old houses are not built to.
I have previously commented that I have a 3 bed villa in Spain and it has 28kWH of ASHP output, and it is not over fitted. The manufacturers of ASHP, all of them, suggest that a 5KWH ASHP is only suitable for a 40 sq m room. This is because they are well aware of the typical room, ceiling heights, number of windows, typical insulation etc.
The idea that a 9kWH ASHP could run a dedatched house is rediculous, it is like using the nameplate capacity on windfarms, something that is unachievable in every day usage, and must take into account a level of insulation way beyond existing UK housing stock. One needs to have heating capable of dealing with the coldest winter nights. Of course, with enough insuation you can warm a house just using the incadescent light bulbs of old.
The consumer is being misled as to the costs that are really involved in this switch from gas to electricity.
If you want a real laugh, try the assumptions spreadsheet from Element Energy, the advisors to the CCC
https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Element-Energy-Trajectories-for-Residential-Heat-Decarbonisation-Executive-Summary-Assumptions-Log.xlsx
Before the new thermal building regulations came in, I insulated the walls of my solid walled Victorian terrace house and another similar house which I let out using a layer of aluminised bubble insulation against the inner wall, 19mm treated timber batten, a thin multi foil insulation quilt,19mm cross batten and foil backed plasterboard. The quilt manufacturer calculated that the insulation value of the solid wall was increased by a factor of four. The ground floor was insulated with ten inches of fibreglass.The cost, doing the work myself, was under £500.The roof was insulated already with 300mm insulation. The windows were all double glazed and the doors and chimneys were draught stripped and blocked off. There is a south facing conservatory. Despite all this and halving my energy bills, the houses are only rated as class D for Epc. The government is proposing to prohibit the letting of houses with rating below C in five years time. There is a law of diminishing returns for upgrading existing housing and the next government move will make letting impossible. Perhaps their scheme is to force sales and make a huge capital gains tax grab.
Because you did the work yourself and don’t have any bills from approved suppliers, all your work will be for naught
The failure of logic, as far as I see it, is that in order to create hydrogen, one of the ways is to use natural gas in the process. So, instead of heating our homes with natural gas, it is effectively ‘converted’ to hydrogen which we can use to heat homes instead – at a rather large increase in costs to the homeowner. Their argument for this is that any ‘carbon’ released in the process will be captured and stored/sequestered and that this cannot happen if every Tom, Dick and Harry is using the gas at home.
No matter. As the country is swimming with money at the moment the change to heating won’t even be noticed.. /s
Same argument for using natural gas to heat your home (very efficient – even the “waste” heat contributes) as opposed to using natural gas somewhere else to make electricity and then heat your home – very inefficient.
Burning gas for power generation is wasteful – we should use it for home heating and cooking and for vehicles (clean burn for cities in particular, easy to retrofit to petrol engines).
Power generation should be from coal, with suitable pollution control. Like Drax (before it went to the criminal activity of burning biomass). Coal is cheap, plentiful, easily transported, easy to store. What’s not to like? And what else can you do with it?
You would think so, wouldn’t you Paul? But I fear the majority of the great British public are like frogs slowly getting boiled. They ignore it until its too late.
Brain rot has succeeded, there just is not enough reaction to anything any more. They can be lied to continually, locked up etc and they just come back for more.
I compare the UK government’s crazy approach to everything ‘green’ to that of its neighbour across the channel. It set up a similar ‘ citizens forum’ who came up with most of the same stuff as in the UK. Most have been watered down by the French government as to be almost nothing left. EVs are encouraged and there will be some added tax for ‘heavy cars’, but thats about it. Nuclear is to remain the bedrock of generation moving forward with a gesture towards some more wind/solar. A bit of extra property insulation with grants, but nothing about banning gas or oil heating. Of course the nukes give France the ‘out’ card every time, so they talk a lot at EU level, but don’t have to do much themselves.
Bojo the destroyer…
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/10/great-reset-bojo-wants-to-quadruple-your-heating-bill/
I know, lets make everything more expensive, and less efficient, to the extent that a decent life is no longer affordable. Then, when all the world looks at your “success,” they’ll be in awe and say, “hahahahahahaha.” Oh, come on, it’ll be worth it. …except they are doing this to the rest of the world, so, actually, no one will be laughing. Not even the Chinese will find it funny, because then they’ll have no one who will be able to afford their shoddy junk.
What I want to know is when those becoming rich at everyone else’s expense, and the nation is impoverished, where will they spend the wealth they’ve stolen? Are that short sighted? If you collapse the world economy, who wins?
I see many saying what I used to, that if we don’t like it we should vote for someone else. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone else. They’ve nearly all gone mad.
There should be a mass abstention from voting. Already I doubt if there is any MP returned with a majority of the electorate voting for them. If turnout was less than 50% their legitimacy would be very questionable. Actually, it might be better to spoil the ballot papers as that would show a willingness to vote by turning up to do that. Now, you will get some bore drivelling on that people fought and died in world wars to allow you the freedom to vote but they can never see that it also grants the freedom to withhold that vote.
Withhold the vote from one party only until they listen. The Conservatives are the obvious candidates, because they might actually listen. They have a rump of back benchers who are climate sceptics.
Meanwhile lots of climate sceptics join the Conservative Party and start agitating at all levels. Get their attention. It worked with the Corbyn supporters joining the Labour Party. The Conservatives are a relatively easy target – only 180,000 members. Just need, say, 10 like-minded people to join the local association and start arranging presentations and presenting common-sense back of the envelope numbers….you have only got to start telling people on the doorstep how much the climate change policies are going to cost them and how they won’t have ANY effect other than to impoverish UK and make China richer. You can even be AGW-neutral and still get people on side. Also plays to Conservative ideals of economic competence.
And because if Labour get in and carry on with this nonsense then the Conservatives might realise there is a vote winning strategy in NOT enacting policies that will hit poor people the hardest. Hits Labour where it hurts most – the claim to be looking after the under-priviliged.
Or spoil your ballot paper as I did in the last election by calling them all “climate change numpties”.
Oh joy the greeny lost her deposit!!!!!
TS option is the only possibility in my area. I have already decided to join the Conservative Party (something I do not wish to do) in order to get to the meetings and hold the local MP to account.
Unfortunately, even as the Red Wall Fell our MP: Dame Margaret Beckett (Lab) got 21,690 votes 51.08% of those cast. So I can’t see any hope of a Tory MP any time soon. I’ve written to her on the subject a few times on the subject of CC, models and the other nonsense with the usual standard reply
The strategy is not about getting Conservative MPs everywhere, its getting a party that drops the economic madness of the climate change act 2008.
By getting enough climate sceptic activists to join the local Conservative Party associations, you can agitate. Get a presentation from someone on the cost, make a noise.
The focus is to make the Conservatives realise that (a) policy based on the Climate Change Act is not be a vote winner and (b) there is a vote winner in not increasing the heating costs of poor people and banning ICE vehicles for no good reason.
Its not even necessary to push climate sceptic views (and doing so may actually make the job harder) . We only have to point out the insanity in numbers people can understand, like:
My gas is charged at 2.6p per kWh
My electricity is charged at 13.3p per kWh
If your kWh usage is half gas/half electricity, then if you force everyone away from gas heating their annual bills will rise by 70%. How will poor people afford it?
Or: the price of electricity is currently 13.3p and about 40% of that is generated by natural gas annually which is very cheap. If you get rid of natural gas for electricity generation the price of electricity is going to rise from 13.3p to 20.4p per kWh, a rise of over 50%.
Do both of those things and domestic energy bills will double or triple.
How will anyone afford it? Why are we doing this to ourselves? What effect will it actually have on the climate?
“None of the above” on the ballot paper.
Micky R
“None of the above” on the ballot paper.
Is a complete waste of time and of your power to vote. What does that achieve? It might have comedic value but its not going to stop old people dying from being unable to heat their homes.
You have to ACT not talk. How many emails have you sent:
1. To newspapers
2. To the BBC
3. Your MP
4. Scientific Societies
5. Public speaking
What else are you doing to make a difference? Spoiling ballot papers is childish. You need to tell MPs what you WILL vote for and what you will NOT vote for.
If people on this blog, and WUWT etc think that sounding off with clever wit is going to change anything, you are deluded. The only people reading this are the same as you – pissed off of Reading (or whatever).
You need to get stuck in AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE by STANDING UP AND BEING COUNTED.
Check out Lorraine Allanson on the previous Ben Pile blog. She stepped up. It may not have been a success, but if 10x more did the same thing it will be.
In 2023 gas boilers will be banned in new builds
In 2035 gas boilers will not be replaceable legally.
I might be dead by then, but my children won’t be.
@GE & TS
Some good ideas, for starters. Do we have time to save ourselves from Global Warming Hysteria? I hope so.
> energy efficiency and cutting carbon emissions are noble aims.
Why? When doing so will have precisely zero effect on the climate? (Even if you believe the IPCC’s dodgy computer models). It’s a hugely costly and damaging exercise in political virtue signalling which is far from ‘noble‘.
Energy efficiency is good if it makes financial sense – but there is nothing ‘noble’ about it. If I waste a few extra KWh, me wasting my money will makes zero difference to anyone else.
It’s this idiotic mindset which has got us into this position.
Peoples memories are short, the next 1963 like winter will reset the climate memories.
If Mr Clark wrote “Successive governments have got away with adding ten billion a year to our energy bills, without us noticing.” then he is wrong.
Thousands, maybe even millions of us noticed.
Yes, we here did but I can assure you that ignorance of this is rife amongst even those you might consider to be intelligent and hold decent jobs. And the media is to blame for that as they are their only source of information. We have seen the media fail completely with Brexit – you just need to read today’s offerings to see that or I guarantee that every newspaper and news bulletin would have wrongly referred to yesterdays EU Council meeting as a ‘summit’. And there is wholesale censorship of the US election as nowhere will you see mention of the court action by 18 states over electoral fraud by the Democrats or that Texas is enacting legislation that provides for a referendum on succession from the Union should it come to that.
A C Osborn, many did notiice, but the government of the time managed to deflect the critism ono the energy companies. This was so successful that “greedy energy comanies and fat cats” are still beleived to be the cause of high energy bills. Wasn’t Ed Milliband the prime mover in some sort of price freeze wheeze?
Ed Milliband called for a price freeze just as prices were topping out: gas prices had risen sharply in the aftermath of Fukushima, because the Japanese suddenly added substantial LNG demand by closing nuclear capacity. That was beinf resolved, not least by plenty of new production. He would have made a hopeless energy trader.
All the main political parties and most of the media and especially the BBC have succumbed to the same group think. Until there is a national political party prepared to challenge the consensus and spell out what exactly all the greenery will cost people and how it will impact on their current lifestyles, the propaganda war is effectively lost. Only a national party can demand the right to present its case. I hope that Farage is listening because all the others have closed minds.
Farage is unelectable. What worked for Brexit was frightening Cameron into thinking he was going to lose a large number of Conservative voters, given it was always a Eurosceptic party (at least at grass roots level). Plus Euroscepticism was already known to be significant amongst the electorate. You can’t call them all “deniers”. Where Farage was also successful was in being thick skinned and stubborn enough to rebut the old hackneyed accusations of “racist” and isolationist, getting topics such as rational immigration policy back on the table after the slurs of the left.
The same won’t work for repealing the Climate Change Act 2008 (which is what is required). All three parties support the CCA2008 (483 voted for it, 5 against) and everyone who disagrees is right wing loon. Besides the science says….
So unless you think you can overturn the CCA2008 by overturning the entire scientific establishment first and then the numpty, gullible politicians second, there is no chance of changing anything down that route. Unless you overturn every scientific society to climate skepticism you won’t have a hope in hell. I have been directly involved with trying to just hold back the tide of climate alarmism in one of them (Geological Society) and its almost impossible.
Forget the science, its about cost and economic harm. Politicians also have to save face.
So as I have argued elsewhere on this thread and others, the key is to infiltrate an existing party and push back hard on costs, economics and measurable differences. The Conservatives as a party have a lot of association members who run businesses – they will be easy to get on side with the economic arguments. If you can get a push from the associations, you can change the outcome. And the CP is small – 180,000 members. 10 like minded new members in each association should do it – most members are too old to be active anyway. Then push up to national conference, fringe events etc. Keep making a noise. If 10 people from every constituency in the country turn up at Party Conference they will get noticed. You just have to keep them on message – no climate skepticism, just plain old hard-headed costs and benefits.
I think this is an excellent idea. I also think the time to act is now, before any of the proposed green policies are put into effect.
Should we join the local conservative association, or the national party?
Some questions to ask:
1. What has been the impact on global temperature of UK carbon emission reductions to date? Is it measurable?
2. What is the predicted impact on global temperature in 2050 and 2080of UK net zero policy? Will it be measurable?
3. Given the annual increase in carbon emissions of China and India, what will be the effect on global carbon emissions of the UK policy in 2050 and 2080 compared to not doing it?
4. If all countries in the world met their commitments to the Paris Climate Treaty every year until the year 2100 what will be the predicted reduction in global temperature compared to not doing it? Will it be measurable?
5. The industrial revolution arose due to the increase in efficiency, reliability and productivity that was offered by switching from man-power to fossil fuels. Given that renewables are more expensive for power production than fossil fuels and are unreliable how is switching power generation to renewables going to do anything other than reduce efficiency, reliability and productivity?
6. Does the cost benefit analysis which formed part of the Climate Change Act 2008 briefing show a net benefit to the UK?
7. How much will the battery cost?
I had a good chuckle this morning reading another puff piece on the BBC from Matt McGrath celebrating the Covid inspired decline in anthropogenic CO2 emissions this year, albeit they’ve made no measurable difference to the slow and steady rise of CO2 emissions from all sources. What particularly tickled me was the final quote in the article from Professor Pierre Friedlingstein: “The atmospheric CO2 level and consequently the world’s climate will only stabilise when global CO2 emissions are near zero”. Anyone else here see the idiocy in that statement? Just as well the government aren’t taking advice from academics such as him in formulating future energy policies…oh, wait a minute.
Always remember, as Confucius, or somebody equally sage, said: “It is easy to fool people. It is much more difficult to convince them that they have been fooled”. I fear for my children’s and grandchildren’s future from the CCC and IPCC nonsense.
An excellent set of thoughtful comments from all you all you commenters. Take a bow!
Government “We are going to get CCS to work, but in the meantime get lets destroy the entire natural gas infrastructure”
… “Doh if you really could get CCS to work then most other stuff is irrelevant ”
… Anyway we know that sometime in the future, proper low CO2 energy solutions will arise
which don’t need subsidies.
Social housing with 9″ solid walls has often had external insulation added in recent years. Have there been any observational studies of how effective it is? Have the expected benefits from the models materialised?
My 4 bed house was built in 1970 in Washington new town, the front and back upstairs are just single walls, in fact breeze block with small tiles on battens, the main side walls are conventional with foam in the cavity, it is also studio so most of the inside roof line is pine nailed to the purlins so about 5 cms to the roof tiles, there is mineral fill but most of it has slipped down, So it is really badly insulated by modern standards. Neighbours have added external polystyrene wall cladding , but suffered from damp problems, there is no cavity. Two close by have had the roof taken off and more insulation inserted, they changed hands so no idea if it worked. I used last year 17 MWh of gas, slightly above average but at 2,22 p /kWh (Avro) cost £374 plus fixed standing charge of 15p/day adds £54.75 is £428.75 plus 5%VAT. gives £450 for the year. I would qualify for the recent Green Home Grant scheme, but the cost is crazy, its over 20 years for payback……makes no economic sense. Unless of course the heating cost goes up by 10 times, which I suspect is the plan…..
stewgreen
Who in Gods name gives a monkey about rising CO2. The big man gave humanity a clue, C3 plantlife flourishes around 1,000 ppm atmo CO2 and 1,200 ppm atmo CO2.
@HotScot.. and how far has shouting that got you ?
Weak debate like that is how we have allowed our Guardianland masters to push us to a Venezuela 2020 economy.
As usual our Climate Policy, which should be an energy policy, is cobbled together in reverse. Rather than assembling accurate data first and then designing a policy around it, HM Government has come up with a policy based on extreme political ideology and then cherry picked dubious ‘facts’ to justify it.
I read in today’s Torygraph a comment piece pointing out the ‘hypocrisy’ of our biomass power generation (Drax anyone?). Madness.
I have been saying precisely this for years. The internet is littered with my posts, virtually word for word what the Telegraph Journalist is saying.
Long before the publication of Prof. Michael Kelly’s seminal essay on the cost to homeowners for just the Domestic aspect of the Green Industrial revolution. I got quotes for installing a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP). Between £20k to £30k. As the author points out, I live in a small, 3 bedroom, solid masonry, Victorian end terrace cottage. Insulation would be in excess of £10k. If internal (and I can’t do it externally because the building is listed) the house would also require complete redecoration and a new kitchen and bathroom (neither survive being ripped out well these days). Pound for pound what Prof. Kelly has estimated.
The entire central heating system would need to be replaced including underfloor pipework. Whilst we were at it, whole house ventilation would be necessary as that’s the only cure for dampness.
Long story short – £75k to £100k. Money I don’t have nor can borrow.
But for the young, guess who are rubbing their hands in anticipation? Yep, the banks, with all those loans.
Nor has any of this been done with an electoral mandate. This is Totalitarianism, a government instructing an electorate to comply.
I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the IPCC have recently said that human sources of Co2 constitute 1 molecule in every 62,500. Which according to my calculator is 0.000016%.
It hardly justifies the £ trillions to pay for all these mad schemes the Government keeps proposing. Time for a re-think, NOT a re-set. Especially as an increase in Co2 is beneficial in many ways.