Gas Boiler Manufacturers Face Fines For Missing Soviet Style Heat Pump Targets
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Welcome to the USSR:
Boiler manufacturers will be fined thousands of pounds if they fail to install enough heat pumps under new net zero plans.
Ministers are planning to force production quotas onto large manufacturers as part of efforts to boost uptake of the devices across Britain.
Companies that fail to meet the quotas will face a fine of £5,000 per device. In an example given in consultation papers, a manufacturer with a shortfall of 100 would be expected to pay £500,000.
Heat pumps are seen as a key replacement for gas-fired boilers, which ministers want to phase out in order to cut carbon emissions.
However, Mike Foster, chief executive of trade group Energy and Utilities Alliance, said the quotas were “absurd” and politicians were “out of touch”.
Mr Foster said the “Soviet-style” quotas could force companies to import heat pumps to meet the targets.
He added: “If the public want to buy heat pumps, our members will sell them, that’s the basic law of demand and supply.”
It comes as ministers are planning to overhaul subsidy rules to make gas-fired boilers less attractive to households.
New gas boilers could also be banned within a decade, the Government revealed in its net zero strategy.
The Government said it would consider recommendations made by net zero tsar Chris Skidmore to ban new installations of the heating systems by 2033.
If adopted, the policy would mean households would need to install heat pumps or other low-carbon systems once their gas boiler breaks down.
Grant Shapps, the net zero secretary, yesterday said the policy was not a “rip-out-your-boiler moment”.
“This is a transition over a period of time to get to homes which are heated in a different way and also insulated much better,” he told Sky News.
Heat pumps are expected to be the main low-carbon replacement for domestic gas boilers, which are responsible for 14pc of the UK’s emissions.
The devices work by drawing warmth from the outside air and run on electricity, which can be generated cleanly.
However, uptake of heat pumps has been sluggish so far amid high costs and nervousness among consumers.
Only 42,779 heat pumps were installed in the UK last year. The Government wants 600,000 to be installed each year by 2028.
Other measures to encourage the switch in the new net zero plan include making gas heating more expensive compared to electricity by redistributing green levies on to the fossil fuel, and extending the £5,000 heat pump subsidy scheme.
Matt Copeland, from fuel charity National Energy Action, warned there was a risk that households could be left without heating if they were unable to afford a heat pump, which currently cost around £10,000.
He also warned that raising the cost of gas could leave some fuel poor households forced to ration their heating.
Mr Copeland said: “It won’t necessarily incentivise moving to heat pumps, but what it would incentivise is them rationing their energy further and under-heating their homes.”
The Government’s refreshed net zero strategy, which includes more than 1,000 pages of updated policy, was released in response to the Skidmore review and a judicial review that found its original plan failed to say how it would deliver sufficient emissions cuts.
Friends of the Earth, one of the NGOs that brought the judicial review, said it was “ready to take legal action again” once it had been able to fully scrutinise the strategy.
Under plans set out on Thursday, ministers plan to oblige makers of heating appliances to sell a certain proportion of heat pumps each year.
They will earn “credits” for each heat pump installed, which will be used as proof they have met their heat pump targets. Under plans being considered, an initial 4pc of manufacturers’ sales above a 20,000 threshold will need to be heat pumps.
Manufacturers will be allowed to buy heat pump credits from rivals and defer some of the targets to the following year.
Mr Foster, at the Energy and Utilities Alliance, said the quotas for heat pump sales would force members to import heat pumps to avoid fines.
He said: “Confirmation that Whitehall is determined to introduce Soviet-style heat pump quotas for British boiler manufacturers simply reaffirms our view.
“They are simply out of touch with the public, they do not understand even basic economics and frankly, they don’t care about the jobs of British workers.
“The plan to impose huge fines on British companies for selling the boilers that consumers want is simply absurd.”
Henk van Den Berg, strategic business manager for heat pump maker Daikin, welcomed the move.
He said: “We need a market that is super-competitive, with all heating manufacturers joining the battle to provide the best value for consumers.”
This really is shameful. The idea that any company should be punished simply for not doing what the government wants should be anathema in a supposedly free country.
And make no mistake, this is the thin end of the wedge. A quota of 4%, as suggested, would equate to about 80,000 units a year, not much higher then current installations. The government’s target is 600,000.
And regardless of quotas, nothing alters the fact that nobody wants to buy the wretched things. So what is a manufacturer supposed to do to sell something that nobody wants to buy?
We already know that the £5000 grant has made little difference, and I suspect if heat pumps were given away for free, few people would be interested. And if manufacturers subsidise heat pumps to that extent, it will be buyers of gas boilers who end up paying the bill.
The likely outcome is that as the quotas become more demanding and the outright ban ever closer, boiler manufacturers in the UK will simply shrink their operations and eventually shut down. If you want to buy a gas boiler then, it will have to be imported.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“If you want to buy a gas boiler then, it will have to be imported.”
No doubt there will be punitive import tariffs on conventional boilers. Governments are simply making people poorer.
I suspect there could be a lucrative trade in smuggling boilers across the Channel disguised as single males of fighting age using small dinghies.
When are politicians ever going to ask their own populations whether they want all this Net Zero and “climate” insanity and hysterics?
All the political parties should simply merge instead of just having different names and pretending to be different.
Switzerland-style referendums are needed to try and put some brakes on the lunatics / control freaks both in government and the Opposition
They did – ask the Tory scum and they will tell you it was all in their manifesto for the last election, so we must have agreed with it.
I voted Tory last time because I agreed with around 10% of their manifesto but around 0% of what was in Labour’s manifesto.
For most people it was the ‘Brexit Election’ as our ignorant politicians stumbled to deal with our exit from the EU. Then, as now, there was no costed plan for Nut Job Zero.
Of course it was a “Brexit” election and certainly NOT a “net zero”, “green” or “climate” election – but all parties sneaked the latter three into their manifestos and claimed people agreed with them.
>>For most people it was the ‘Brexit Election’ as our ignorant politicians stumbled to deal with our exit from the EU.
I canvassed in the last election and I can assure you that the 2 subjects that were discussed overwhelmingly were about Brexit and the 2 party leaders. Climate change was hardly mentioned by the electorate or the Conservative candidate.
Join KING ( the Kill NetZero Group.)
I would if I could find them, can you tell me how to contact them
This is now getting deadly serious. We have a Conservative … conservative(!!!?) Government that is now, essentially, asserting state control over what private companies can make and sell. This is the second of two announcements today – this one is on installing heat pumps, but I understand the Government is also going to mandate that car companies will need to sell electric cars in certain proportions otherwise they will face draconian fines for selling each and every petrol or diesel vehicle! We have a Government forcing companies to sell us products that we do not want, are useless and more costly. Time for those of us in the UK to take action to stop this. Maybe we need to look at what is happening in France and the Netherlands? Unfortunately we have a first past the post electoral system and all the main parties are now a ‘Uni Party’ promoting the same things – there is no choice. The next General Election (due in 2024) will perhaps be our final and only opportunity to derail and end ‘Net Zero’ and this Climate Change madness. Nothing could be more serious, so use your vote and use your right to campaign and protest
That any UK government thinks this is justified and acceptable is extraordinary. If people want these things they can buy them. If they do not want them, on what basis does the government think it can force us to buy them? As for fining businesses that cannot sell us things we don’t want…it is the peak of insanity.
“We have a Government forcing companies to sell us products that we do not want”
It’s a big World out there, if the companies don’t like what the Government is trying to force them to do, they will just up sticks and move somewhere else.
Seems the clever so-and-sos in the Government haven’t worked it out yet, despite the observable fact that it is already happening.
So all the manufacturers either close or go abroad.
These PPE academics really, really don’t understand or they are actively trying to destroy our economy.
Assuming always that this is not fake news?
Even if manufacturers could sell 600,000 every year between now and 2028, who is going to fit them? Some installations could be simple but if it involves major plumbing work as well, the numbers of qualified engineers required are not and will not be available.
I doubt whether the Labour party will see sense either.
Note to self: Some time before 2033 buy replacement boiler and store it in the shed.
They’ll update the building regs to make it illegal to install it.
Then they will get – and richly deserve, a Churchillian gesture!
In order for heat pumps to be the cheapest form of home heating the cost of alternatives will have to be raised by government edict
The biggest problem is that really don’t work. They are extremely slow to heat a house and cannot heat it to the sort of temperature lots of older people fund comfortable. It’s not just cost, they are a very poor substitute.
And sales of petrol and diesel vehicles in 2029 will skyrocket!
Time to start lynching public ´servants’.
Yes, that does look like the only way forward….
Heat pumps in the form of fridges have been with us for 110 years.
If they were any good and cheap as way of heating a property then by now they should dominate home heating. They don’t therefore they are only good for keeping food cool
A/C too since 1901 (Willis H Carrier), bit later domestically
Similarly car manufacturers will be forced to sell a certain proportion of zero emission vehicles.
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/356346/manufacturers-face-enforced-electric-car-sales-targets
Mgn: This is a similar thing government/EU tried with fuel efficiency of motor manufacturers by penalising them for low mpg over their entire model range. Aston Martin got round this by buying into Toyota’s Aygo and rebadged it after giving it the AM treatment. Lovely looking car. Not sure how many they sold…
Most boiler manufacturers sell most of their boilers to the trade. It is the trade that installs most of them.
Today Ross Clark has an article in The Times exposing what the IPCC really said and the various weather myths; in the Spectator an article against the Attenboro 60% insect decline projected as truth on his current nature series. Buy his book
Someone needs to reveal UKs one percent versus China’s 31%
Someone needs to reveal three percent of zero point zero four percent for the entire world. The one percent of that (for the UK) or even 31% for China still has a lot of zeros after the decimal point.
>>Someone needs to reveal UKs one percent versus China’s 31%
How about the 3% of emissions from underground out of control coal seam fires?
https://infogalactic.com/info/Coal_seam_fire#cite_note-Deep_underground-2
“Across the world, thousands of underground coal fires are burning at any given moment. The problem is most acute in industrializing, coal-rich nations such as China. Global coal fire emissions are estimated to cause 40 tons of mercury to enter the atmosphere annually, and to represent three percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.”
‘Boiler manufacturers will be fined thousands of pounds if they fail to install enough heat pumps under new net zero plans.’
Maybe y’all do things different over there, but in US, manufacturers don’t do installations.
‘Ministers are planning to force production quotas onto large manufacturers as part of efforts to boost uptake of the devices across Britain.’
They still don’t know how business works.
‘an initial 4pc of manufacturers’ sales above a 20,000 threshold will need to be heat pumps’
Manufacturers sell to distributors.
Solution: for every 100 boilers they make, they make four heat pumps, and throw them on a pile out back, and add their cost to the 100.
‘Manufacturers will be allowed to buy heat pump credits from rivals and defer some of the targets to the following year.’
Cirrusly? The country that beat Hitler has devolved to here?
You’re Tallahassee from Zombieland aren’t you!
I had a heat pump installed in December of last year, 2022.
I want to wait for a full year’s use before I reach a conclusion on my decision to have one installed but my initial thoughts are:
1. I’ll be long dead before it reaches a monetary break-even point. And that’s despite having a solar panels and battery installation too.
2. Heat pump systems are bigger than I had expected and the pump itself is noticeably noisy outside though inside I’ve now lost the sound of the central heating boiler switching on and off.
3. Installation was a significant negative issue for me.
4. Boiler annual service insurance was easy and reliable but I’m still not sure how that’s going to be arranged for the heat pump. I’m not too impressed with the installation company’s after sales support.
Would I have one installed again? At the moment, my answer is no, I wouldn’t.
The house is warm so that’s not the issue, but heat pumps do alerts to be more expensive to run in the cold months compared to a gas boiler. And that’s because of two factors; firstly, 1kwh of heating by electricity is about 3.3 times more expensive than that produced by a gas boiler. The approximate Coefficient of Performance of a heart pump fall significantly during cold weather. My very rough estimate is that the CoP needs to be at least 3.3 to match the efficiency of a gas boiler and it isn’t, in my case, during the cold months of December, January and into February. Now, it may be significantly higher than 3.3 during the warmer months but of course, I don’t have the central heating on at that time.
I hope this all makes sense and will add to people’s understanding of the implications of best pump installations.
One last thought, anyone who is considering having a heat pump installed, go to look at one or two that have been installed in houses and speak to the owners. I wish I had done so.
What was your total cost including upgrading insulation?
I paid £8,500. The installation company was also given an additional £5000, the government grant.
My house meets the insulation standards so I didn’t need any further modifications.
But another issue comes to mind; some installers will require any microbore pipework to be replaced before they will install a heat pump. Some don’t. I contacted 5 installation companies for quotations. Two wouldn’t, including octopus. Only one gave me a reference to one of their customers.
The Government have today published “Powering up Britain” documents. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/powering-up-britain?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications-topic&utm_source=4ff07278-f072-47d8-97b5-9865dc3705aa&utm_content=daily
“Powering up Britain” – are they being satirical?
The first Para: “One of the foundation stones of thriving economies is access to cheap, abundant and reliable energy. We rely on it to power our homes, our infrastructure, and industry. Affordable and plentiful energy also makes businesses more competitive, generating growth, jobs and prosperity. And it keeps the cost of living down.” is the key to understanding why the government is so misguided. It is of course true, but our policies have prevented this and made energy horrendously expensive and insecure.
They are trying to blame the Russia / Ukraine war but the damage was already done, as Bevan said the UK is an island floating on coal and surrounded by fish (approximately), by banning fracking and off-shore exploration. So there is no excuse other than mad virtue-seeking climate CCA policy. Europe is well on track for economic self-destruction, fiddling while CO2 increases harmlessly.
Should this have come out tomorrow, April 1st?
If the UK boiler manufacturers close down their factories and import their boilers, then I presume our energy policy makers will simply make the importers or the installers responsible for the quotas?
Or, keep increasing the price of gas…..or cut the gas off completely….there are many ways to achieve the aims of this religious mission.
As I’ve said before, if forced to use electricity, then I suggest testing out first infrared radiators, which are easy and simple to install and require no maintence, before resorting to a heat pump. The electricity should be very cheap as we are told that renewables are now 9 times cheaper than fossil fuels….in fact so cheap that heat pumps are not required!
And keep the old gas boiler/plumbing in the hope that the current theocracy comes to an end.
I envisage a lot if court cases if the gov cuts the gas off.
They won’t win. The Government has already lost a case at the High Court brought by ClientEarth for breaching the CCA’s sixth carbon budget (2033-37) and the judges intend to enforce the CCA. Since Net Zero is a statutory requirement of the CCA I am wondering who will be considered to be responsible and what will be the punishment.
“Cut the gas off”
Over 22m of the UK’s 28m households are on the gas network. Do ministers even know this?
If the quota is 4% then it is equivalent to a tax of £200 per gas boiler. Boiler prices vary considerably. It will be an annoyance on a larger model but perhaps a 25% tax on a smaller one for a pensioner home. Once again, effectively it’s the poor what gets the blame, because this is about numbers of units, not any other measure.
I forgot to note there will of course be VAT on the additions to bills to recoup the heat pump tax – just as with VAT on motor fuel duty. That’s an extra 5% on the £200, or £10.
O/T
I note that LCCC has (as promised) started updating the CFD register for the latest indexed prices. As it stands at the moment there are some clear anomalies, such as some AR3 wind farms getting a reduction in indexed strike price despite a year of high inflation, and AR4 solar farms getting 33.75% uplift to 2012 prices, while AR4 offshore wind gets just 21.47% in some cases. The biggest indexation uplifts published so far go to Hornsea 2 and Triton Knoll – both wind farms have yet to fully take up their CFDs – and Hinkley Point nuclear at 43-46%.
I suspect there must be errors in the published figures, so perhaps we will get corrections in the next week or two. The previous levels of indexation covered a much smaller percentage range (at least excluding things like CHP, where the basis is evidently different) of about 21.5% to 28.8%. I’m surprised they went to press before sorting it all out properly.
Yes, I gave up trying to work it out today!
For example, Hornsea Phase 1 has increased by 11.8% this year, but Triton has gone up 13.0%
I’ll wait till we start getting the April cfd payments to do a full analysis
This is madness. This policy and the others behind it are going to make most people much worse off even assuming that they could be executed as planned. We all know that installing millions of Heat Pumps in less than 10 years is impossible even ignoring the costs. With our old housing stock most old houses will never been warm even running a heat pump 24 hours / day. Add in the high cost of our electricity it will make them un affordable to operate.
As a county we are heading for a train wreck of epic proportions.
Take a look at the video:
Stupid is forever, by Ron White
I took the common sense approach – my new gas boiler was installed seven months ago. I think, to stick up two fingers to the government, each manufacturer of gas boilers should provide a cardboard box with ‘Heat Pump’ written on the side. One ‘Heat Pump installed for a fiver!
Stupidity raw stupidity.
The lunatics are in charge of policy and nothing less than blackouts is going to convince them of their foolish fairytale.
Can the grid handle the move from gas boilers to electric heat pumps? Below is a graph from UCL, where they compare a cold winter electricity demand over the year with one with 90% uptake of heat pumps.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/energy/sites/bartlett_energy/files/styles/non_responsive/public/heat_pumps_for_uk_homes_how_will_they_be_powered_-_fig_1_0.png?itok=5PI3ECbS
“Friends of the Earth, one of the NGOs that brought the judicial review, said it was “ready to take legal action again” once it had been able to fully scrutinise the strategy.”
This is the game in a nutshell. Once the government has set a legally binding target, activists and globalists will spend millions on legal fees effectively forcing “compliance”.
The only (peaceful) way out is to revoke the CCA. Which means a majority of voters need to vote for candidates other than LibLabConGrn.
Quite a tall order. Perhaps it is time to emigrate. I have a friend who retired and moved to Guananjuato. He loves it there, it’s very safe, warm – obviously, and there’s none of this green and woke crap we have to endure in the UK these days.
Homicide rate 28.4/100,000 in Mexico v 1.1 in UK, think I’ll pass. (lived in Pakistan, Malaya, Germany, Belgium, Turks & Caicos, Papua New Guinea, Bermuda, Scotland)
I had a friend 30 years ago who retired to Guadalajara. I don’t know anything about Guananjuato, to the east. My friend said the American enclave at Guadalajara was over 40,000 people. You could live like a king on an American pension. I think it likely that Guananjuato would be a super place to retire as well.
GTF out of Britain is a good call.
Time to sharpen the pitchforks and dip the torches in some nice fresh pitch!
Asking for a friend. What is the Carbon Footprint of a Molotov Cocktail?
Yes, it’s shameful—so stop electing the Marxists, you idiots!
Unfortunately there is no-one but Marxists to vote for, despite them calling themselves Conservatives, Labour, Liberal and Green.
https://www.sccommerce.com/buildings-sites
Move now while the best sites are still available.
Skidmore is a dangerous lunatic. He is extremely arrogant and totally dismissive of any arguments that contradict his fatuous opinions. He has no abilities, no knowledge and is entirely given over to extreme Green views. He simply cannot believe he is wrong or needs to think about any of these issues. That he cannot see what will happen if he tries to fine businesses for failing to sell things is a perfect illustration of his simplistic, idiotic thinking.
A communist in a blue jacket, and too ignorant and stupid to realise it. Sunak and his cabal of Chinese influenced (via Hunt’s Chinese communist wife influence) so called government, are traitors to this country. Making us poorer and meaner. Bring back treason as a crime and make life imprisonment the punishnent.
I wrote aletter of complaint to the DailyTelegraph because they stated in an article that heat pumps are 300% efficient. This is the often quoted Coefficient of Performance but it is not efficiency as it is based on units of electrcity which is an energy carrier and has to be generated and distributed to the consumer.
Their editorial panel came back quoting what used ot be the BEIS and is now Grant Shapps new department which stated that heat pumps have an effcieiency of 290%.
I find it very worrying that the civil service departments are unaware what real efficiency is and that they shape government policy. This is not helped by the general lack of technical knowledge of the average politician.
I’m sure I was taught in physics at school that an efficiency of 100% is impossible, it is always less?
I didn’t think we lived in nazi germany/ the USSR. Net 0/ the green movement are communists/fascists. The eventual effect of all this will be devastation and starvation on an industrial scale. It is utter and complete madness, and all based on junk science, I literally cannot believe what is going on. These people are completely insane! The gas boiler is the best way to heat a British home, the ICE by is the best solution for drivers. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
Agree wholeheartedly. Time for a proper pushback. These scumbags are destroying us. Net zero and unrestrained migration is killing our people.
making gas heating more expensive compared to electricity by redistributing green levies on to the fossil fuel
They’ll have to go some if electricity made from gas is to be cheaper to use than gas itself on domestic bills.
Indeed.
Currently my electricity is 32.719p per kWh and gas 6.42p/kWh per unit, which I believe is fairly typical.
I have noticed here the comparisons are always between gas and electric heating but don’t think I have ever seen mention of oil heating, which is what I have. When I first moved to Scotland (Caithness) in 2001 the house I bought was off grid and had oil heating. I knew nothing about it but it seemed fine and is common up here. Then I moved to another village, also off grid, where the house had Calor (LPG) gas which again was fine but I would have preferred town gas as understood that was cheaper. Last autumn I moved into Wick and assumed I would get town gas, as others there have, but the road I have moved into doesn’t have it and I’m back to oil.
I was advised to contact Home Energy Scotland to see if I could improve the heating and insulation but their only solution was to get an air source heat pump and keep the curtains drawn. Having heard in the past how expensive heat pumps are I refused (I remembered the despair of council tenants in my former village when their solid fuel fires were removed and replaced with air source which they couldn’t afford) but it is obviously government policy to recommend these regardless of individual circumstances.
Since no central heating works in winter when there are power cuts many people have diesel generators and/or solid fuel fires as backup. How long will this be allowed?
How long will this be allowed?
Depends how much resistance the authorities have to face up to if/when they try to force compliance.
We are governed by ignorant, stupid fools.
Agree wholeheartedly. Time for a proper pushback. These scumbags are destroying us. Net zero and unrestrained migration is killing our people.
If the government deploys and mandates centralized decision making and government fiat instead of allowing free markets it will get the same result that EVERY Socialist/Communist/Fascist government gets.
Lies. People who are put under pressure to meet “quotas” that cannot be met will either get out of the business altogether or they will lie. Pure and simple.
It amazes me that people and sober “institutions” seem to believe everything that China says, anything that the Eco Loon Left says, they just accept it and reprint it without ever, once questioning it.