Ban on gas boilers in new homes may halt house-building, industry warns
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Now who would have guessed this would happen?
A ban on gas boilers in new homes and a switch to heat pumps could stall housebuilding without urgent upgrades to the electricity grid, the industry has warned.
The Government has proposed a de facto ban on gas boilers in new homes from 2025 as part of its net zero plans.
It is backing heat pumps, which run on electricity, as their main replacement.
But the industry has this week written to the Prime Minister warning of potential problems in grid capacity, and calling for more clarity on the impending deadline, which is still in the consultation stages.
Housebuilders fear development could be stalled if the new rules come into force without additional investment in the electricity grid, which is facing long backlogs for connection.
The new homes gas boiler ban is among the policies that have come under scrutiny since the Government won the Uxbridge by-election, seen as a referendum on Ulez, the London scheme to tackle air pollution.
Steve Turner, from the Home Builders Federation, said: “Moving away from gas for heating will increase electricity usage and if there isn’t the grid capacity, we have seen elsewhere, the answer is to not allow any new housing.
“Digging up cables etc and adding substations isn’t something that you can do overnight. These are the kinds of issues we’ve been warning Government about for some years.”
There are several challenges to meeting rising demand on the network, including a years-long backlog of connections of renewable energy generators, and a lack of local grid distribution.
Around 31 per cent of current projects that request to connect to the local distribution network need extra capacity on the transmission network, according to the Energy Networks Association (ENA), which represents the gas and electricity transmission industry.
A Midlands based developer was recently told by the local electricity distribution operator there was insufficient capacity to include 10 flats with electrical heating on a development, industry sources said. Ultimately, they were built with gas heating.
Last year, local authorities in West London warned that electricity for housebuilders may not be available until 2030, because of an increase in demand from local data centres.
New net zero homes will require four to five times the peak electricity capacity of current homes without EV chargers or heat pumps, according to industry estimates.
Electricity demand will increase by almost 50 per cent just to cover heat pumps by 2050, according to projections from the climate change committee, which advises Parliament.
A spokesman from the ENA said the issue was “a known concern and something that we are absolutely working to tackle”, adding: “Connections is a challenge, both for demand and generation. And as we see acceleration of renewables and acceleration of low carbon technologies as well that is challenge that we’re aware of and working on across the industry, Government and Ofgem.”
Mr Turner said the industry was not calling for a delay to the deadline for all new homes to be built to net zero standards.
“The industry can deliver on its commitments but it’s not just house builders that have challenges,” he said. “Energy providers in particular have a mammoth task on their hands to upgrade infrastructure if the new requirements are to be implementable, whilst maintaining housing supply.”
The industry has raised other concerns about their ability to install heat pumps in all new builds, including supply chains and a lack of installers and maintenance engineers.
Meeting the Government’s housebuilding targets of 300,000 new homes a year would mean nearly doubling the current installation rate of heat pumps, which hit 163,341 in 2022.
There are currently only about 3,000 trained heat pump engineers in the UK, but at least 27,000 will be needed in the next six years.
A government spokesman said: “We’re investing billions to improve energy efficiency across the country and the Future Homes Standard will lower emissions in new builds, deliver homes fit for the future and help reduce energy bills for people across the country.
“We’re also working closely with Ofgem and electricity network companies to ensure that networks can accommodate new connections, including housing developments, in a timely manner.”
BTW – Silly Emma Gatten’s claim that the current installation rate of heat pumps, which hit 163,341 in 2022, is of course fake.
The estimated figure is about 60,000, though official data from the Microgeneration Certification Scheme is as little as 30,000.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Heat pumps were never intended to operate a warm water/radiator system. Blown air or underfloor heating are the usual uses for heat pumps. I was reading a US document recently and all they ever mentioned was blown air. They also mentioned the back up heating for when the air temperature drops below 40 deg F.
And interestingly there are no grants/subsidies in the UK for air to air systems.
When I bought a house in the period of the boiler scrappage scheme it had a 40 year old Jackson and Starley hot air gas heating system still in full working order. I wanted to instal a combi boiler with radiators and checked out the scrappage scheme. I could not get any assistance as the air heating system was classed as the highest efficiency rated system!
Oops sorry should read “Johnson and Starley”
We’re running a 30 year old gas Rayburn and 5 radiators for our CH, the metal flue pipe is never more than hand warm, so the efficiency must be pretty good!
The timer thingy gave up some years ago so now we just operate it via the knob on the side, no hardship, and we adjust the temperature now to suit the weather, which we never did when it was automatic and ends being cheaper too.
Call me a cynic but I believe that there is another aspect to this (as if one is needed) bearing in mind that it is the house building community that are complaining.
Quite simply, houses built to not zero compliance standards simply must be materially more expensive to build but will achieve little if any premium on the prices of similar, non-compliant houses. Profit margins will thus be significantly squeezed. You can understand, therefore why the builders don’t want the hassle and extra costs. It’s not as if the “transition” is going to save the planet anyway.
It’s not only the builders themselves. The actual market doesn’t want heat pumps either. The market needs gas and/ or oil-fired central heating. The latter particularly where there is no mains gas.
>>builders don’t want the hassle and extra costs
My council’s well aware of that problem. They’ve just issued new building standard guidance to help them achieve their net zero targets but it’s all “nice to have” and in promoting the documents in Council a councillor said he would “welcome higher standards”. So much for “crisis”. The only recent planning applications granted with anything like the desirable features are both taxpayer funded and for rent. I understand that funding formulae for rents won’t allow them to recoup the extra cost.
On a practical level, I took part in a webinar where tests sites were evaluated. “Success” or otherwise relied heavily on user skill, so even the theoretical gains could be overstated, but who’ll ever know, apart from the householder via his/her energy bills?
Doh…….Never saw that coming.
Just how thick are the PTB that are only just facing up to the fact that the electrical power distribution is totally inadequate to provide heating energy.
As OFGEM are involved, it is guaranteed to be a cluster f*ck, they have never been successful in implementing anything (smart meters, approving dodgy (criminal) electricity suppliers and billing us for the costs, going green instead of keeping prices down).
Powers That Be
The electric power distribution system will never cope .
In 2016 a government climate committee , [ not the present climate change useless lot ,] concluded that electric heating would never work as it would need a 400% in generation capacity .
And something which is to complicated to ever get a mention . With heat pumps having an electric motor , there is going to be a massive lagging power factor , which will need a very large and expensive system to keep the grid balanced .
So along with all other the other NZ insanity , it will not work .
You lost me on lagging factor
To William: As are all other practical engineering issues being lost on politicians and Deep State ideologues. In a few years people are not going to be happy with their energy systems as designed by PPE graduates.
Reactive power, none of the PPE graduates will understand that, In fact not many electrical engineers fully understand all the ins and outs of VARs. Just about all big grid trip outs are down to shortage of VARs;
Good point.
These heat pump houses will be unsaleable when people have had a try at living in them and are driven mad by the noise the pumps make, shiver in winter and at the same time suffer enormous electricity bills.
I presume it will be nigh on impossible to convert these houses to sensible heating. Stoves using an external flue would be an option, or a wood-fired boiler, otherwise an external gas or oil tank.
Leaving aside that it’s the wrong technology. Government has the impression that just because you can print money, you can print engineers, technicians, infrastructure and equipment.
Yep. According to the charity Nesta ( formerly the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) at least 27,000 engineers will be needed by 2028 to meet heat pump installation targets and “This would require more engineers to be trained every year than currently exist in the whole industry.”
“…print engineers…”
I thought 3-D printers were invented to do this sort of thing? If I am wrong, two-week courses for school leavers can be instituted.
It is a well known law that the market picks winners and governments pick what is left, which is losers.
Governments generally have a poor record on proving helpful.
When it is a cold winter’s day, with little wind and sunlight, where is the electricity going to come from to power the heat pumps? Will it be from the hydrogen storage facilities that do not exist or the Tesla batteries which are too expensive and store little energy to power the entire grid?
W will offer our throats to the people at the “other end” of the interconnectors!
The whole country is on the verge of collapse: Not enough electricity, not enough gas, not enough common sense. The only thing we have too much of is hot air from the mouths of politicians, that will be more than thousands of heat pumps can ever produce..
Strange that Sunak is saying that ‘banning things isn’t the way for net-zero’ (bbc today), this governments net-zero policy is confusing, like the old ‘fracking or not fracking’
There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but the cat still gets skinned.
Somewhere, I have an old book of cartoons: “Two Hundred Uses for a Dead Cat.” One was to make a blanket from him. Prescient!
Phoenix 44 will hopefully back me up on this one. Large sectors of the public, most politicians, nearly all journalists, and even some businessmen have fallen for this ridiculous arithmetical construct known as an “Average”.
It is so bizarre that you get weather forecasters using insane expressions as “what is normal for the time of year”…..”normal?” Or even “what it should be” ..”Should”?
With heat pumps the sales people have successfully corrupted the figures into ever increasingly weird concepts such as “seasonal coefficient of performance” i.e. total bollocks. The simple reality is that as outside temperature drops two things will happen. Firstly your heating requirement will increase and secondly the efficiency of your air source heat pump will dramatically decrease. The combined result will be a massive increase in cost and you can forget “average”. Your local supply will not be capable of delivering adequate electricity to eveyone’s heat pumps which will be running barely any better than a straight resistance heater….YOU WILL GO COLD.
Nobody in their right mind should be installing an air source heat pump as their sole heating system in the UK. So it really is not surprising house builders are pushing back against this nonsense.
Plus the UK has c. 1m UK residential 230v low voltage networks about 80% or 450.000 kms of which are built for lighting plus and not the loads of an EV or a heat pump. Replacing this network would require digging up most of the non motorway roads in the country.
Interesting discussion with a Doctor of Engineering at Southampton University at https//v2g.co.uk/2021/05/electric-vehicles-as-energy-smart-appliances/
Apparently a pop concert audience caused a small earthquake of 2.3 on the Richter scale at Seattle.
https://www.avclub.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-earthquake-seattle-swifties-1850687280
As the limit on fracking earthquakes in the UK is set at 0.5 on the Richter scale, I presume that pop concerts are to be subject to the same rules. /s
Who needs Science knowledge when you have a Behavioural Psychologist in your team, and the backing of the Establishment? 🙂
They don’t care. They are already bought! There is an Agenda, and nothing will change their mind, apart from the Public seeing it hit Reality! But it will get much worse before it gets better. Good luck, they only double down and, therefore, they need to be vanquish before normality can return.
Mark Twain: It’s easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled.
Re heat pumps a recent ad by Fischer said installations were running at under 40,000pa and “As it stands the government’s target of 600,000 a year by 2028 seems a long way off”
I guess they were being polite so didn’t say ‘effing impossible’.
“Electricity demand will increase by almost 50 per cent just to cover heat pumps by 2050, according to projections from the climate change committee…”
Projections from the climate change committee should be doubled.
Electric car boom looking like a bust?
Yes indeed —plus replacement of gas cookers by electric.
Quite apart from the astronomical electricity consumption that would cause for using electricity to heat anything, electric cookers don’t respond immediately to the controls, particularly for reducing the heat.
>>Yes indeed —plus replacement of gas cookers by electric.
It always was. Make something LESS practical and simultaneously more expensive and expect the market to choose it? What dream world do they live in?
>>Electric car boom looking like a bust?
My 60s built house originally had electric underfloor heating, but that was abandoned in favour of gas central heating before I bought it. A recent ground-floor extension uses a ‘wet’ underfloor heating system. Putting ‘all your eggs into the electric basket’ seems a foolish move IMHO, as power cuts still happen. It’s also called ‘free choice’.
Wait until your heat pump kicks on while your EV is charging–lights out.