Millions of rural households will be forced to spend £13k on heat pumps
By Paul Homewood
It sounds as if the Tories are determined to commit electoral suicide:
Rural homeowners could be forced to spend £13,000 on controversial heat pumps as “net zero” rules cause traditional oil heating systems to be banned.
Government plans to phase out oil heating systems as part of its eco drive will cost rural homeowners £11,000 more than if a like-for-like replacement was used, trade bodies have warned.
From 2026, households will be banned from replacing liquid petroleum gas or oil boilers with equivalent models, and will instead be forced to install expensive heat pumps.
Households on the gas grid will face a ban by 2035, but only if the price of the green technology has fallen to match gas boilers.
A report by the Energy Utilities Alliance, a trade body, found replacing a heating system costs £2,000 on average, while a heat pump costs £13,000 for equivalent homes.
Mike Foster, of the group, accused the Government of discriminating against rural homeowners and treating them like “low-hanging fruit”.
A survey by the trade body found 85pc of voters would not vote for any MP “that backed a ban costing them an extra £11,000 just to keep warm”.
The Government has held a consultation on the issue as part of its Heat and Buildings Strategy but has yet to publish a response. Mr Foster said it was likely homeowners would “have to find the extra £11,000 themselves to fit a heat pump”.
He said: “What is particularly unfair and discriminatory, is that those who live on the gas grid won’t face a ban until 2035, and then only if heat pumps have fallen to the same price as a gas boiler. Those using oil or liquid gas, mostly living in rural areas, have no such protection.
“It really is a matter now for politicians to take notice. If they don’t, then their P45s will be in the post after the next election.”
Around two million off-grid homes rely on oil or liquid petroleum gas to heat their home, according to Liquid Gas UK, another trade body. It said the push towards heat pumps risked penalising households with bills of up to £32,000, with installation and retrofitting costs factored in.
Sarah Lee, of the Countryside Alliance, a campaign group, said the plan to phase out liquid petroleum gas and oil boilers by 2026 was “unjust and unfeasible”. Most rural houses, she added, are unsuited to heat pumps in the first place “due to their archaic construction”.
Ms Lee said: “It is important the Government recognises the challenges facing rural households and supports sustainable heating solutions that work for all, no matter where you live, rather than using those who live in the countryside as guinea pigs.”
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was contacted for comment.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Mike Foster says homeowners are being treated like “low-hanging fruit”: If I could have my way with a few useless MPs I know what I’d like to do to their low-hanging fruit!
And, since when did NZ ‘rules’ become law?
What possible logic is there for distinguishing between LPG and NG? And if there is no market for LPG where does it go after every barrel of oil is cracked at the refinery?
Its all nuts of course, but the more this goes on the more nuts it becomes.
I contrast this with France. There the ban on new oil boilers happened this year. But there is substantial financial help with alternatives, especially for less well off households. And there is no ban on LPG , indeed its recognised that gas in general must have a role for decades to come.
As an aside the French approach to Home Energy Performance, the dreaded ‘grades’, is far more gradual than those proposed in the UK. Its not until 2034 that uprating to grade C for rented accomodation. However the ban on 1/1/23 on Grade G rentals is causing problems in the Parisian market, with many landlords selling as their apartments are unable to be uprated.
“…if there is no market for LPG where does it go after every barrel of oil is cracked at the refinery?”
The same goes for petrol (gasoline) and diesel.
I think LPG is much more widely used across France than it is in the UK. I recall seeing Calor tanks very often in rural areas. In the UK the majority use oil and seeing gas tanks is rare. Of all the rural properties I viewed when moving if they were off-grid they were all oil.
To rub salt into the wound, LPG is currently cheaper than natural gas through the mains at the moment. How mad is that?
My sister in law lives in a “park” home. Pretty sure she heats it by LPGwhich is stored in a container owned by the site. She has an individual boiler. At the age of 90 on a limited income there is absolutely no chance she could afford to replace it
And where is all this electricity going to come from? Certainly not “green energy”. The push by some MPs for onshore wind turbines, which are not themselves renewable, shows that they know nothing of power generation. Perhaps they are tired of the late nights in the Commons!
I think the only thing MPs know about is claiming expenses and employing their family on inflated salaries.
Or joining big brother where they can do less damage to the country
Yes , where is the electricity going to come from .
With only about 2% of vehicles being BEVs , there is already dire warnings of major blackouts this Winter because we do not have enough generation.
In 2016 a government committee concluded that electric home heating was impossible as it would need about another 400% increase in generating capacity . That has clearly been ignored and now , even if they want to start with just some homes the whole idea is total insanity .
And of course it is not just generating it, you have to get the electricity to the house. If you have just hugely increased load for every home simultaneously then you must upgrade all the distribution network.
The “establishment” in the UK is out of touch with the general population; however most of the general population are usually too apathetic to attempt to force meaningful change, the Brexit vote being an important exception.
It’s time for Farage to administer another well-deserved kicking to the “establishment” , as long as it doesn’t result in yet another shambolic Prime Minister achieving power.
I’d rather have had a Cameron/Farage government than Cameron/Clegg.
The Brexit vote was a real shock for the “establishment”. Cameron was confident that the result would be to remain, hence he felt safe in supporting the referendum and stating that he would remain in power even if the result was “leave” , but he changed his mind after the vote.
I speculate that a proportion of leave voters voted leave because they wanted to kick the “establishment”, even if they didn’t know what the “establishment” was. A by-election today in any UK constituency could follow a similar route.
We have an oil fired AGA which warms the house and heats the water. We have a coal bunker and a stock of firewood. I and my wife total 168 years and we will see you all next spring, don’t worry . I’ve just deserted the Tories so have lost thst leverage. Anyone who wants to muck us around will be resisted.
More ill thought out rubbish.
I have an oil fired range cooker that from one efficient pressure jet burner does all the cooking, hot water and when the ground is white if neccessary assists the log burner with the central heating. for the size of my old place its very economical. A heat pump would be in my opinion be completely unsuitable.
A while back for my own amusement I enquired about the cost of installing an EV charger, the man from the power company took one look and declared that as my supply was so old it would need ungrading at around£12500 + vat so that was the end of that. I conclude that a 7kv heatpump would not work either, so by my reckoning I would be well north of 30k and thats without any other work un order to ‘go green’at my age that wont be happening.
How much gasoline and diesel fuel will be required in the vehicles that will deliver and install all these heat pumps? That should add to the atmospheric CO2 they are trying to lower.
The netherlands now has a nitrogen minister ? seriously ? answering to the
minister of all gas I presume – great jobs .
As regards efficiency – electricity is the most wasteful fuel due to grid costs and energy loss through the transformers and generation thereof.
The ministry of atmospheric gases can now be merged with the ministry of silly walks
Just when you think they can’t become any more stupid.
I have oil and state pension income, I will NOT be getting;
a) a heat pump
b) a ‘not so’ smart meter
Idiots.
Mind at present I’m in Madeira, every road is 1 in 4, how they expect battery vehicles to be of use here is laughable!
But you can at least go downhill -lol
I wonder how they will play down the CO2 emissions from the currently erupting Mauna Loa?
Sounds as if the UK has also lost its collective minds. Very expensive stupidity.
Only the politicians, the Greenblob, the NGOs and the bureaucrats.
Quite apart from the total lack of grid power to supply all these magical heat pumps, how many of these rural properties have a connection that will allow another 7 to 10kW in load? That’s another 40A, so likely doubling the supply spur needed back to the new enhanced size substation. All those local distribution cables on poles, doubled.
Magical thinking.
And it’s not as if heat pumps actually work when it’s cold. Those countries that use them (from low cost hydro) top up the heat with resistive power. The gain drops to near 1 when the temperatire difference is more than 25 degrees, so no use in a frost.
Absolutely right .
The average home in the UK uses 10 KWh of energy per day .
Most 20th century housing has a supply based on the fact that not all of that is in use at the same time , so there will be about 50 houses on a substation which has a max 250KWh .
So for heat pumps , [ or home car chargers ,]to work would need a massive increase in the local infrastructure as well as a massive increase in generation capacity .
Sorry ITRW just posted to you above what you clearly already know! oops.
From the Renewable Energy Hub website (https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/heat-pumps-information/how-do-heat-pumps-work-in-cold-weather/) “The best weather for heat pumps to operate in is warm or moderate . . .” Brilliant!!”
It’s not about cutting CO2 emissions. It’s about oppression. The real intention of Net Zero is mass murder.
” It’s about oppression. ” There’s certainly evidence to support the view that Net Zero is about control, see comments by the UN and WEF re global governance.
Millions of rural households will be forced to spend £13k on heat pumps
Will they?
Can an electric boiler be a viable replacement for a fossil-fuel-guzzling gas boiler? In smaller homes the answer is yes
https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/boilers/article/electric-boilers-what-you-need-to-know-ajZpQ1U7Ds6U
Nearly all electricity must come from guzzling fossil fueled generators they just guzzle it from far away and out of sight which is even less efficient since about
2/3 rds of the energy is lost in generating and conducting the electricity through
the network and transformers – better to physically deliver the oil and gas to the premises and only lose less than 10% in conversion to heat and leaving the powering of devices and lights to the grid .
Even the which magazine loses all common sense when comes to the carbon con hypnosis .
But an electric boiler is just a resistance heater. So is a traditional immersion heater. So are freestanding convector heaters from Amazon for less than 30 quid. And electric showers – there’s one for less than £60 from Screwfix. And kettles.
Why on earth would one pay a grand or more for an electric boiler that is possibly less efficient than using all of the above? If anyone bought such a thing it would only be because of a triumph of trivial convenience over cost. Surely there are quite a lot of homes that already have kettles and immersion heaters, and even electric showers.
I’m keeping my 30kW combi boiler until they raise the price of gas to be more expensive than leccy, then I’m buying a pitchfork…
Some misunderstanding here perhaps. If the only available alternative to certain people is a heat pump, thanks to government climate regulations, would an electric boiler be preferable to a heat pump, due to being much cheaper?
The CoP for air source heat pumps is regularly quoted as 3-1. You supposedly get 3 units of heat out for every 1 unit input. However, this is only at predetermined parameters – these are an outside temperature of 7°C and inside water temperature of 35°C.
Well given the average daily temp of Newcastle, I certainly wouldn’t want one there!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_upon_Tyne#Climate
Newcastle? A friend of mine used to work for SSE. His then job was to try and flog heat pumps to Scottish commercial customers. The problem was them icing up, due to the input temperature falling well below the dew point. When that happens they are worse than useless, since they have to go into reverse to get rid of the ice.
I keep reading comments from people in Scandinavia and northern parts of the US that reckon they’re all things wonderful, though. Puzzles me. Is it that warm air heating is more common there and that suits the technology better than water filled radiators perhaps? Less humidity? Don’t know…
The current mob are TINOS (tories in name only) and no different from the other control freaks and “climate” fanatics currently in the House of Commons
>>It sounds as if the Tories are determined to commit electoral suicide: