Why heat pumps will never work in Britain
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Another damning report on heat pumps:
Heat pumps are poorly suited to British homes and the Government’s relentless drive to install them will cause “uproar” across the country, energy leaders have warned.
The controversial devices have been adopted across Europe, but ministers are warned that Britain’s “geology, weather and culture” mean they will not work here.
Despite watering down a range of green policies last week, the Government is still proposing to ban the sale of new oil and gas boilers by 2035, part of a wider drive to reach legally-binding net zero goals by 2050.
It is urging households to install electrically powered heat pumps instead, but buying and installing one typically costs between £7,000 and £13,000.
Because take-up of government grants has been so poor, Rishi Sunak is now offering households even more money to agree to install one.
For now, there are fears that if heat pumps are pushed too hard on the British public there could be “significant resistance”.
Sarah Williams, deputy chief executive of gas distributor Wales and West Utilities, called the high price of heat pumps a “real challenge” for consumers, especially those on lower incomes.
She pointed to similar controversy in Germany over a ban on the sale of new gas boilers from 2024, dubbed the “heat hammer”, adding: “In the UK, any decision pushed upon consumers is likely to meet significant resistance.
“The challenge of mandating a heating system is that it’s not something that’s attractive or a status symbol, it’s simply a function of your home that you don’t think about.
“So the Government requiring 22 million homes to move to a heat pump is very likely to cause uproar across the UK.”
Heat pump rollout plans have already met fierce resistance, not least from rebellious Tory MPs. Caving to pressure, the Government has pushed back the ban on oil boilers from 2026 to 2035, and is now offering boiler upgrade exemptions to homes that are off the gas grid or that need costly electrical work to switch to a heat pump.
It comes after former environment secretary George Eustice warned that forcing 1.3 million rural households to ditch kerosene boilers would be “their own version of London’s Ulez.”
Even so, the push to install heat pumps in all other British homes remains. In 2021, the Government-funded Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project installed 742 heat pumps across the country with the pre-stated aim of proving the technology is viable in a range of properties. The study found that there is “no property type or architectural era that is unsuitable for a heat pump”.
However, Mike Foster, chief executive of the Energy Utilities Alliance, a trade body, insists that installing heat pumps across the board is “like pushing a square peg into a round hole”.
He says the UK’s unique geology, weather and culture make heat pumps fundamentally unsuitable in millions of older, poorly insulated houses.
He said: “Because of the Gulf Stream, our weather patterns aren’t as stable as they are in, say, Poland. We’ve historically built houses to cope with this fluctuation of temperature. Our habit is to interact with the weather far more than in other parts of Europe.
“A heat pump runs at a constant temperature 24/7. But in our climate, being able to turn on a gas boiler if it gets cold makes more sense.”
Meanwhile, Dr Jan Rosenow, director at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a clean energy NGO, warns that the Government is undermining its own efforts to make heat pumps commercially viable by failing to reform the way we tax energy.
He points to the relatively high price of electricity compared to gas in the UK as a “big factor” explaining low uptake compared to the rest of Europe.
“Historically the ratio has been higher in the UK than in many European countries because we put the policy costs on electricity,” he says.
“Recent price caps indicate that the spread is getting larger. This is one of the problems that the Government said two years ago they would address, by reforming how we allocate green levies and how we tax energy. But so far nothing has happened.”
The criticism comes after the Government announced it would increase the Boiler Upgrade Grant by 50pc to £7,500 to boost heat pump uptake, a tacit acceptance that the technology is not as popular as hoped.
Before the hike, a total of £150 million a year had been made available to offer £5,000 grants to households that install air source heat pumps and £6,000 grants for those that get ground source ones. But so far only 14,800 vouchers worth about £75 million have been redeemed, with the scheme now in its second year, according to figures published by regulator Ofgem.
The scheme, launched in May last year, has been branded an embarrassment by critics, with the vast majority of its budget going unspent.
Another idea being floated is to remove the current requirement for some properties to install insulation before a heat pump is fitted.
Mr Foster called the idea “ludicrous” and “a backward step”, adding: “Even advocates of heat pumps admit they need to be used in conjunction with insulation to be effective.
“It will lead to higher annual bills each and every year. The whole consultation seems to be an attempt to breathe life into a dying scheme.
“Whitehall officials and ministers bought the idea that heat pumps would be as cheap as boilers to install; they were warned by the industry this would not be the
case.
The question puzzling the politicians pushing heat pumps on the public is why the technology remains so much less popular in the UK than the rest of Europe.
The UK installed just 55,000 heat pumps in 2022, far short of the Government’s target of 600,000 a year by 2028. France, by comparison, installed 621,000 last year.
In 2021, the devices made up just 2pc of all heating systems sold in the UK – the lowest share in Europe, according to the European Heat Pump Association.
Twenty other European countries also had higher installation rates than the UK. The highest ratio of heat pumps per household is in Norway (60pc), Sweden (43pc) and Finland (42pc).
The single biggest drawback putting consumers off is cost. The price of installing a new oil or gas boiler is around £4,000, according to the Energy Saving Trust, two to three times cheaper than a heat pump.
And while the Government’s relatively generous grants of up to £6,000 can make a big dent in this figure, installing a heat pump can also require an unknown number of costly electrical upgrades.
A government trial found that 81pc of homes fitting a heat pump needed a new cylinder and 93pc needed new radiators. If heat pumps were guaranteed to save you money once installed, persuading homeowners to sign up would be a lot easier.
But the technology is often more expensive to run than the “non-green” alternative, according to the Government’s own advisers.
The running cost of heat pumps is 10pc higher than that of an average gas boiler – equal to £100 more a year, according to a report by the Climate Change Committee, an independent adviser on tackling climate change. The study was from July 2022, when gas prices were at a record high.
Effective insulation is crucial for heat pumps to function optimally because the devices operate at lower temperatures than gas boilers. Yet around 25 million homes in Britain do not have sufficient insulation. As efficiency drops, the cost of running a heat pump relative to a gas boiler rises.
A heating professional who lives in a rural, mostly off-grid area in England and looks after predominantly oil central heating systems, says heat pumps are unsuited to many properties.
The engineer, who wished to remain anonymous, says: “I would like to dispel the biggest myth around heat pumps that some companies will tell you about money savings.
“Heat pumps are more expensive to run than oil heating and in some cases LPG [liquefied petroleum gas], depending on the property insulation levels and air leakage. In fact, oil heating remains the most cost-effective heating source available.
“The majority of rural and urban properties are not ready for heat pump installation until windows and insulation has been upgraded to its maximum level. Only at this point should you consider installing a heat pump.”
“Now they are panicking as the British public have sent them a very clear message: heat pumps currently cost too much to buy and run compared to a boiler.”
This comment by Jan Rosenow is grossly misleading, and I am surprised the editors let it through:
Meanwhile, Dr Jan Rosenow, director at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a clean energy NGO, warns that the Government is undermining its own efforts to make heat pumps commercially viable by failing to reform the way we tax energy.
He points to the relatively high price of electricity compared to gas in the UK as a “big factor” explaining low uptake compared to the rest of Europe.
“Historically the ratio has been higher in the UK than in many European countries because we put the policy costs on electricity,” he says.
“Recent price caps indicate that the spread is getting larger. This is one of the problems that the Government said two years ago they would address, by reforming how we allocate green levies and how we tax energy. But so far nothing has happened.”
The environmental levies he refers to are neither “tax" or “policy costs”. They are subsidies paid out to renewable generators, and thus reflect the true cost of producing that electricity.
Simply taxing gas and subsidising the price of electricity in order to persuade people to buy heat pumps would make no sense. Once we all stop using gas, the levies would have to be added back to our electricity bills anyway.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Well in some ways, it’s quite simple really, Just go out n about in the winter time and LOOK at the heatpumps “operating” in frosty cold areas. ….. See them all iced up?
Like everything else on the green agenda – DOES NOT apply to the rest of the (non) urban country. Interesting to note yesterday after the German Hessen area election, only TWO areas voted for the Greens: the cities of Kassel & Frankfurt, Why is it not so clear cut in the UK? https://www.hessenschau.de/politik/landtagswahl/ergebnisse/ergebnisse-der-landtagswahl-2023-in-hessen-vorlaeufiges-endergebnis-v14,landtagswahl-ergebnisse-100.html
“Another idea being floated is to remove the current requirement for some properties to install insulation before a heat pump is fitted.”
There are numerous reasons why heat pumps are a disaster that I have bored people about on here before (!) but to address the point above.
A gas or oil boiler is capable of running radiators at high temperature (up to 75°C) enabling them to heat up a house from very cold rapidly. Heat pumps typically run radiators at just 35°C and thus have to often run continuously to sustain an adequate temperature.
This is a very important point. Heat energy is lost to outside at a rate varying with the temperature difference between inside and outside. If your F/F heating switches off at 8:00 when you leave for work the house temperature falls to eventually parity with outside. You are no longer wasting any energy.
Just prior to returning home, the boiler fires up and rapidly warms the house – everyone’s happy.
A heat pump, however, continuously running has a constant high temperature gradient between inside and outside and thus actually loses a lot more heat energy.
This is why the insulation is so critically important – though in reality a high level of insulation almost equally benefits a standard boiler heating system anyway so comparison is not so straightforward as many would like.
This is not my spin on the situation but the facts presented by the former government agency the Buildings Research Establishment (BRE) who subsequently rated Heat Pumps as “poor” on Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings.
If you put in a heat pump in an older standard UK home the overall energy bills will significantly increase…..no argument.
I was told by a Heat Pump provider that they would refuse to install one in my solid, 9″ wall Victorian cottage because they were afraid of lawsuits down the line.
He told me that no amount of insulation and double/triple glazing in the property would help matters much and we would also have to install mechanical ventilation which he estimated at at least another £10k over and above the heat pump/electrics/pipework and new radiators.
We were looking at a £30k bill for an EOT, small, 3 bedroom house.
The whole thing, however, was an academic exercise as the building is listed and therefore exempt from any forthcoming regulations I believe.
The interesting point that spills from that is, there are lots of listed buildings around the country connected to the Gas grid. Were the government ever to stop the supply of mains gas the planning nightmare involved in somehow heating listed buildings would be monumental. LPG might be an option however it’s expensive and inconvenient.
There would be an uproar over any decision to compel listed building owners, most of whom receive no financial inducement from the government to maintain the historic fabric of the country, to alter homes for expensive heating solutions.
We are already subject to over regulated, intrusive, expensive and restrictive interventions in any alterations we make to our own properties, at risk of a criminal conviction for non compliance. In theory we can be criminalised for all but essential maintenance, even decorating properties, strictly speaking, requires permission.
Were mains gas cut off it would punish listed building owners disproportionately more than it would any other householder.
Hi IC re listed buildings, I have lived in two myself and still own a third which I rent out. This may come as quite a shock to you but it appears the government are likely to start enforcing EPCs on listed buildings.
The current legislation actually states exemption only applies if “the minimum energy performance requirements would unacceptably alter it” and does not grant blanket exemption.
The Labour party are pressing to remove this and other exemptions should they get elected.
Installing cavity wall insulation can, in many instances, lead to a black mould invasion that is nigh impossible to eradicate and creates significant health problems – British housing stock was designed with a ventilation / breathing space between wall sections – filling it is hazardous
Yes, this is especially true on the West side of the country that often experiences wind driven rain which soaks outside walls. A properly constructed cavity wall doesn’t allow any of this wetness to get to the inner wall, but filling the cavity almost inevitably does. This does not apply to newly built cavity walls which can be constructed with an additional insulation layer but still leave a gap to prevent wetness migration.
I tried to find the 2016 report from the Government climate committee , which stated that heats pumps would never work as it would require a 400% increase in generation capacity .
But funnily enough , it seems to have been made to disappear .
Not only a generation problem , but most 20th century housing has a local supply max of about 5 KWh if they are all switched on , because the average home use was 10 KWh per day , so not everything was switched on at the same time .
So heat pumps are very expensive , [ will become even more so as renewables continue to make electricity prices rocket upwards ,] will not work in a lot of houses , and will lead to more and more blackouts .
So the continued push for them must just be from the Marxist / Socialist plan to destroy our economy .
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
RW… Have you tried the Wayback machine?
Good idea Harry . Used to have the report stored , but lost it somehow .
Not always enough spare time for everything .
But if anyone has , it was the FINAL REPORT of Government CLIMATE COMMITTE 2016 , Headed by Lord Oxborough .
And the electric home heating part was about page 65 , which gives an idea on the length of it all .
ITRW I presume you mean you 5kW rather than 5kWh for the load figure.
However, over and above the instant demand problem is also the type of demand. Heat pumps are high inductive loads which depress voltage especially on start up surge. Lots of heat pumps kicking in at the same time screw up power factor terribly causing multiple trips and outages.
Ray , the difference between power, KW, and energy, KWh, is difficult and not understood by most people .
A generator at a ” Power ” Station turns Kinetic energy into electrical energy . No power is produced until that energy is actually used .
So the correct term for the output of a power station , or the energy requirement of something at any one time , is KWh .
Although it is difficult to tell the difference between a load figure and when the energy is being used which becomes a power figure .
In my simple way (!) I look at it in the same way as mph and miles.
If you drive at 30 mph for an hour, you travel 30 miles.
Equally, if you run a 30KW system for an hour, you use 30 HWh
Yes , Paul has it about right .
It does seem difficult to understand that an output , or load , at any one moment can be in KWh , until you remember that speed , at any one moment is in MPH .
To ITRW, you clearly do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about. If YOU do not understand the simple difference between units of power and units of energy please do not try to overly embarrass yourself in public.
Well Ray s , if you think you know what you are talking about , perhaps you can explain the difference between power and energy .
ITRW , I graduated with a first in Physics from Hull University in 1976. You clearly have no real science qualifications at all if you do not understand such basics.
So for your primitive level of understanding try this article based on an explanation for dummies i.e. journalists.
And also note a very large proportion of posters on here are professionals like me and know what we are talking about. You don’t.
Well Ray , you don,t seem to know that energy is the ability to do work , and power is the rate at which that work is done .
So energy is what is in the grid , and power does not exist until that energy is used .
So all of your bluster comes up with no real answer .
I qualified to be an AMIMech E , but that was many years ago , and I have forgotten more than I can remember .
But at least I don,t turn to Ad Hom attacks .
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ad%20hominem
So you don’t understand the difference between a watt and watt hour. Okay let’s leave it at that eh?
Ray, there i a very interesting point in your link and it is this.
“lifting your carry-on into a plane’s overhead compartment are both work. (On the other hand, just standing there with your suitcase held over your head might tire you out, but it’s technically not work because you’re not actually moving the luggage.)”
Yet to stand holding up a suitcase against the force of gravity requires energy (calories) to be burnt, even though no movement takes place.
So what is the word describing the use of energy “resisting” an opposing Force?
For instance a hovering helicopter where no movement is taking place.
There are many instances where “work is done” without movement taking place, for instance
A person or horse holding back a car or a round rock on a hill.
The teams of a tug of war game.
The scrum in a rugby came.
It would appear that the Physics description of Work and Energy are inadequate to describe all situations.
Muscle burn energy without the need for the movement of an object.
So where does “force” appear in the physics description?
Is’nt it predictable that someone speaking on behalf of a almost unknown pressure group ( the R A P ) should be so frustrated by the general public not accepting their case for clean energy that they should seek further charges to eliminate the advantage of the established preferred sources.
I find it quite despicable that such groups seek to add significant costs to everyone to meet their own agendas. Who do they think they are? And as Paul rightly points out, shifting the tax burden to gas to get us to shift to electricity will simply mean we all pay more for electricity again pretty quickly, so it’s not only unpleasant, it’s deeply deceptive as well.
Late in the day -almost too late – the politicians who purport to be governing us may wake to the reality of their predicament. Their predicament is that if the public at last find their voice ( and their marbles) in time the party that has failed to deny the Net Zero protagonists will be condemned and probably lose the next election. The Mayor of London is in denial but Labpur may wake up to the hazard at last.
As I often point out, today the average daily use of electricity in a 3 bedroom house is under 8kWh per day (Ofgem price cap is based on this, although they just dropped the annual consumption from 2900kWh per annum to 2700kWh.)
A 5kW heat pump at best will provide 15kW equivalent of heat (half that of a typical gas boiler) Running 24 hours per day consumes 120kWh. That is 15 times the present usage.
The electrical distribution system just cannot cope with this demand, every substation will need upgrading, every street will need to be rewired, that is a mammoth undertaking. Add in BEV charging as well. Can we actually generate all this from intermittent wind and solar? NO
Furthermore Geoff such inductive loads suck reactive power out of the system and cause all manner of voltage drop and distribution issues. Ain’t gonna happen but try explaining that to a politician.
Many domestic supplies cannot carry the extra heat pump / battery car load – you will also have to pay the local DNO to upgrade your supply, if they have capacity
Of course, if you’ve bought into the smart meter scam, they can just switch your smart appliances off, or indeed your whole supply on dark, windless days, to keep the grid from falling over
But we will be fine! Millibot is going to double onshore wind and triple solar when he is in charge!
Poor Millibot, we should sympathise with somebody who obviously has had the higher centres of his brain removed so that analytical thought can be replaced by Marxist make believe. “They f**k you up your Mum and Dad. They may not mean to, but they do.”
And do it in just SIX years….
And he claims he’ll make Britain “fossil fuel free” by 2030. No details of how he proposes to achieve this other than building more wind turbines and solar farms. Maybe he has a magic wand.
Hello,
Sorry, not a reply to that good info on heat pumps but a refutation of ‘no climate emergency ‘ in a calm lengthy article in a local paper, not a rant, which I’d like you to respond to. Of course articles with no references should mean that they should not be published or a statement made that readers should use it to do their own research.
It said, in effect, responding to a previous article which said there is no climate change problem:-
“There two other big GHGs (water vapour not being mentioned anywhere) methane CH4 and N2O which destroys the ozone layer and heats the planet 300 times faster than CO2. Methane only does this 80 times faster but there is much more of it than N2O.
The plants and plankton etc. taking in CO2 and giving out O2 has been the perfect balance for us humans and has worked well until we killed off most of the plant life and started pumping excess CO2 , CH4, N2O and other dangerous waste into the atmosphere.
That previous article cited the World Climate Declaration (WCD) . This not a World-sponsored document. It’s the product of Clintel, a lobbying group that openly states “There is no climate emergency”. Clintel was founded by the author of WCD, Augustinus Johannes ‘Guus’ Berkhout, a professor who’s worked for Shell and founded the Delphic Consortium, which does seismic research for oil and gas companies. ( A smear or one could say that that is how he found out there was no emergency!)
NASA claimed that 97% of “actively publishing climate scientists ” agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Not just any old surgeon or astrophysicist.Climate scientists with relevant expertise, who are still actively working.
Meanwhile Clintel’s WCD has been signed by 1,700 people who are a random selection of scientists – many retired – economists,engineers, computer pros and “other experts” including a commercial fisherman and an air conditioning engineer. Research group Desmog have extensively exposed Clintel’s structure and its link to fossil fuel lobbies at desmog.com/climate-intelligence-foundation-clintel/.
David Legates, a one time State Climatologist of Delaware, in 2007 co-authored a paper that questioned previous findings about the impact of climate change on the habitat of polar bears. According to InsideClimate News, that research was partially funded by grants from Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Inst. lobbying group and Exxon Mobil.
NASA, using massive amounts of fossil fuels, say that humans are causing climate change. Clintel’s immersed in oil and gas. It says there is no meaningful climate change -who do you believe?”
There is a lot more to the article which among other things quotes the WWF that polar bears are threatened by Arctic ice melt. One can read that polar bears are dying out and also that their numbers have dramatically increased! The trouble is any link with contending info can be dismissed as tendentious. It’s a hard road.
You are a busy man so you can forget about this.
Regards,
Wrinkle.
There is no climate crisis.https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/08/23/there-is-no-climate-crisis-1600-scientists-worldwide-nobel-prize-laureate-sign-declaration/
And as for the 97% of scientists agree , that load of rubbish has long been discredited for the total lies it is .
All of the lies and propaganda are just about destroying capitalism and western economies .
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
You can also add the quote from another UN Rep Ottmar Edenhoffer of the IPCC. His statement about climate policy being international socialism in disguise was 100% correct.
”One must say clearly that we redistribute defacto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.”
Furthermore, even the IPCC admit…….. “”The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
IPCC Third Assessment Report 2001
I under stood that the now widely discredited ‘97%’ came from a sample of around 3000 scientists who had bothered to reply to the survey and whilst I dont recall the precise wording I thought that figure was arrived at from the answers to ONE question along the lines of; “do you think it is possible that humans MAY have contributed to the rise in temperature”.
Happy to be corrected.
The original 97% claim came from a paper by ” Doran / Zimmerman ” , which had about 70 odd replies to a vague question something like , ” Do Humans Contribute to Global Warming “.
When it was shown up to be rubbish , an Australian activist did another paper ” Cook Et Al ” , where he studied 12,000 published scientific papers and claimed a 97% concensus , after he discounted most of the papers . There was about 41 papers which might have fitted his idea but the whole thing was again a total load of lies .
Thanks for filling in the gaps!
Wrinkle : “The plants and plankton etc. taking in CO2 and giving out O2 has been the perfect balance for us humans and has worked well until we killed off most of the plant life and started pumping excess CO2 , CH4, N2O and other dangerous waste into the atmosphere.”
I suggest you go to the NASA web page :
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows/
“Human Activity in China and India Dominates the Greening of Earth, NASA Study Shows”
“The world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India.”
And I suggest you go to check the work of Happer & Wijngaarden who have shown that increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere does not produce any further GHG warming effect because of IR saturation., work which the IPCC have never refuted, just ignored.
Dr william Happer is one of the most interesting peoples I have ever listened to, along with I think mr Freeman dyson.
Thanks for that info. Not me to NASA but the writer of that article. But I don’t think that paper will print any replies to it.
Otto Baak is Wrinkle – some mix up there!
“97% of scientists” is an outright lie:
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/putting-the-con-in-consensus-not-only-is-there-no-97-per-cent-consensus-among-climate-scientists-many-misunderstand-core-issues
Note that the 97% line was supposedly ‘scientists’ not actually climate scientists.
As for “the science is settled……….”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/08/settled-science-shock-earth-temperatures-rise-ahead-of-co2-emissions-say-scientists/
WTF are you on? Are you “DG Evans and Mrs Sally Evans” by any chance?
Wrinkle:
The claim has some faults.
1. Methane was measured as absorbing Infrared at 4.5 times the rate of CO2, in 1861. Since the first IPCC Report when it was 12 times the Greenies have exaggerated it more and more – the last claim I bother reading was 85 times.
2. Green cover of the land has increased by 14% in the last decades, not quite the decrease in plant life they claim.
3. The original 97% scientists agreed was based on 76 out of 79 (one didn’t respond). That was after about 3500 responses to an on-line with not much enthusiasm – the numbers were whittled down to get the ‘right’ response.
A root cause of this nonsense is the Climate Change Act. Repealing or ignoring it would be rather helpful, unless of course your snout is in the money trough.
Governments can’t ignore the CC Act or any Act – it’s the law.
I use the term ‘ignore’ in a loose sense. The dreadful Act can be amended if there’s the will to do it.
It can also be repealed, but there is certainly not the will to do that.
This seems the best place ask a question given that we have an international ‘membership’ on this forum.
From what I can see many countries other that the UK appear to favour AIR to AIR heat pumps, ie ones that power blown warm air heating systems rather than in the UK where we are trying to make a silk purse out of AIR to LIQUID machinery which doesnt appear to work very well. It appears to me that this type of sytem (air/air) works well and can provide the cooling facility in the summer months as well which of course air/water cannot.
I wonder if the powers that be have followed the current path as blown warm air heating fell out of favour for some reason 40/50 odd years ago?
Just a thought,
LL you are perfectly correct in your assumption. For example the high take up in France are small air to air units principally to offer air con in the summer months in key rooms. The issue is that these systems often only cover one or two rooms absent a full house ducting distribution system.
Air heating systems are genuinely very energy efficient. In 2010 I bought a house with a Johnson and Starley ducted hot air boiler installed in 1963 and still in perfect working order (no water to rust the system out) but it did not qualify for any scrappage scheme as it was in the highest efficiency band possible.
The insistence on air to water heat pump systems is to potentially utilise the existing whole house heat distribution system. Of course the hot water requirement has to be addressed separately which is actually a very good idea and largely why Combi boilers (which run the two functions independently) are so popular.
Either ways though there are numerous other problems to overcome (particularly in the electricity distribution system) that probably insurmountable at under multi £trillions.
Thanks Ray, I did wonder that.
I imagine trying to sell a fully ducted blown air system to millions of home owners would be a bridge too far even for our deluded politicans as well as two many apple carts getting upset so to speak.
As an aside my parents had a full blown air system in their 1960’s house, as a child I remember it working very well and all from a small gas burner inside a heat exchanger, although of course I have no idea wether it was economical. Maybe the wheel will turn full circle.
As noted here, there are many negatives to heat pumps – a major one for me, in terms of health concerns, is the strong likelihood that the tepid water generated by inefficient heat pumps, will allow mould and more concerning, legionnaires disease, to grow in the cooler water systems, affecting house holders from aerosol spray from taps, showers etc – this has the potential to be another asbestos crisis, with people plunged into life changing, sometimes fatal health conditions that those idiots pushing heat pumps will ignore and walk away from – the blob won’t force these stupid nut zero tat on their own, neither will I
Other heat pump health related issues are those from the LF / infrasound noise and vibration from it running 24/7 – some people are highly sensitive to this – it will literally drive them mad
Even if you can afford the £5,000-£10,000 initial outlay, why would you? Very few people find their existing gas boilers anything other than very good, even if quite few years old. Everybody is kept warm, water is nice and hot, they don’t go wrong very often. There’s no incentive to change whatsoever.
The incentives are all theirs, not yours
A very good point. When condensing boilers were mandated back in 2004/5 (the principle was devised back in the mid 1970’s) there was no real public kickback because they worked just as well and saved typically 2,000kWh on annual gas consumption. They were an economic improvement on what went before. Who in their right mind is willingly going to give up something that works well and is economical for an inferior and more expensive alternative?
Let’s not lose sight of what this is all about. It’s to stop the inexorable rise of the Keeling Curve (not a chance) because CO2 has such a strong linear correlation with temperature (no it doesn’t) and causes violent trends in weather (no it doesn’t)
Heat Pumps do work in the UK and they do make very good sense.
Where the UK Government has got it all wrong is by only incentivising air source heat pumps as a replacement for Gas boilers in heating water for existing central heating radiators which are not designed for low temperature heat pumps. The UK Government clearly don’t understand the subject and are misinformed on the matter as I have been saying for years.
The way forward is to use Air source heat pumps to heat the air in homes. These are far more efficient as there is no need to heat a denser medium or run a central heating pump all day because the water temperature is too low. Water for washing can simply be heated separately with another separate panel placed on the roof or a wall or by immersion heater.
Air to Air source heat pumps work twenty times faster than radiators to produce heat in a room and the cycle can be reversed at the touch of one remote control button to cool a room in the summer. They are also half the price of Air to water systems to install. I have designed these systems and arranged installation for years and I know what I am talking about. Our politicians are completely ignorant on the subject.
Would it be more accurate to say that politicians are completely ignorant on any subject upon which they pontificate?
Politicians have a great deal or reading to do to ensure that they are suitably informed before they comment or cast a vote on any subject requiring a decision. This requires a high caliber of person and is why our political system is competitively based. Unfortunately, Labour in their unfathomable wisdom decided to depart from selecting the best candidates for their ranks by forcing a female only agenda policy. In doing so they have managed to eliminate many far more formidable and suitable candidates simply because they happen to be men. This woke stupidity has IMHO damaged the overall quality of MP’s in the commons simply to swell the ranks of one particular sex. Which incidentally is illegal in any other profession, however apparently the law doesn’t apply to our political elite. Is it any wonder that contempt for our political process and in politicians has increased dramatically.
With respect I have to disagree with your comment that:
“Politicians have a great deal or reading to do to ensure that they are suitably informed before they comment or cast a vote on any subject requiring a decision.”
How do you therefore explain the Cimate Change Act of 2008 and Teresa May’s Net Zero being put into law on the nod, without any debate?
Our local MP was a TV journalist and then a SPAD before taking on the safe Conservative seat of East Devon. He knows the square root of not a lot and just parrots the party line to any questions I raise to challenge the ‘official narrative’. (and with the forthcoming boundary changes he’s scuttling off to a neighbouring seat where he thinks he’ll have a better chance of staying on the gravy train come the next general election).
Judging by the vast majority of other commentators here, he’s not an extreme example of the breed . It’s got nothing to do with the sex of the candidates, it’s to do with their intellect, their background education/life experience and their motivation for seeking public office.
We are in agreement,
I didn’t claim that politicians DO read a lot to educate themselves about subjects which they comment and vote on. I said that they HAVE a great deal to read. The fact is that many don’t have the time or simply don’t bother which is why we have the dumb stupidity of a claimed Climate Crisis when there isn’t one!
I also didn’t claim that not bothering to read up on subjects sufficiently has anything to do with one’s sex. Labour’s blatant sex discrimination has worked against them because in many constituencies they have banned the strongest candidate from standing on the grounds of gender alone. This means Labour’s ranks can NEVER be as strong as other parties because they are effectively tying one hand behind their backs. You can see this already in the overall weakness of Labour’s back benchers who are by and large unknown and individuals with little or nothing to say and who simply tow the party leadership line or box tick for an easy life.
This IMHO has damaged the quality of debate in the House of Commons.
Paywalled
https://archive.ph/utuwT
oops…
The green energy net-zero plan will require a command economy
And several technological impossibilities, and a massive drop in living standards
I live in a stone-built Victorian terraced house in a conservation area, and have been concerned about the heat pump mandates for some time.
We have good loft insulation and double glazed windows all round (more big sash window area than actual exterior wall), but the house is still noticeably cooler when the wind blows in winter compared with calm days. We plan to replace the 40 year old gas-fired microbore heating system in any case, but I was curious about the possible effect of conversion to ASHP , and any other insulation options given the nature of the house.
Home Energy Scotland were actually very pragmatic, and realised from my descrption that ASHP was a non-starter as the back garden is too small and being a conservation area we couldn’t put the machine in the front garden either. I did the sums based on our month-by-month gas usage, average temperatures and a realistic COP, and reckoned that at minimum our heating bill would double if we switched to ASHP.
No thanks.
I did manage to find some useful documents produced by Historic Environment Scotland regarding insulation options for old buildings, including thing like
blowing polystyrene insulation into the void between the lath and plaster and the exterior stone walls , and there are case studies showing the drop in the U-values.
I’ll have to run the numbers and see what sort of saving that would bring.
Given the limited amount of exterior wall, my guess is that the cost for us would vastly outweigh the benefits. It probably also warrants a follow-up on the buildings in the case studies to see if any damp issues arose.
For now, I’m content that the completely new heating system I’m about to install will be worth it for us (solves hot water issues as well as improving the heating performance and controls) but I have no intention of getting an ASHP.
Another thing that bothers me is that our politicians don’t seem to realise that subsidies have no effect on the final cost paid by the consumer.
The ‘green thieves’ just increase the price of the installations according to the amount of the financial support.
I learned this about ten years ago when the feed-in tariff for solar PV was halved from 40-ish pence per kWh to 20-odd.
The price for a 3 kW roof-top PV installation halved more or less overnight.
The rotters had been charging ‘what the market would bear’ and that was based on the FIT return on your £12-13k investment.
When the return halved, the installation price halved to £6-7k.
There is a simple characteristic of heat pups that I never see discussed (see second law of thermodynamics) namely that the colder the weather the lower the output ( ground and water source excepted). This is the opposite of what is required and I can only assume the maniacs who are pushing this agenda are either wilfully ignoring it or are ignorant of it.
I designed and installed air-to-air heatpumps in two low-energy bungalows back in the 1970s. They aren’t there now because they couldn’t be maintained.
Air to air heat pumps are perfectly adequate for heating homes in the UK very cheaply because sensible co-efficiencies are now at 500% using inverter systems and R32 refrigerant.
The only time they will struggle is if temperatures are below minus 20C and how often is that expected here in the UK? Even then the refrigerant is 12 C colder than the ambient temp so there is still a 12C gain per cycle.
That’s good, the govt won’t have to subsidise them then!!
“Air to air heat pumps are perfectly adequate for heating homes in the UK very cheaply because sensible co-efficiencies are now at 500% using inverter systems and R32 refrigerant.”
Total (max Right Whale scale) bollocks.
I loved this part:
“The study found that there is “no property type or architectural era that is unsuitable for a heat pump”.
Well, except for the following:
===
“8% of properties lacked of external space for an outdoor units and 5% of properties were too close to a neighbours to meet noise limits.
7% of properties needed a heat pump larger than products available for this trial to meet property needs and 4% of properties had other comfort requirements that could not be met in this trial.
4% of properties were assessed to need measures too costly for how some DC’s set their project budget (eg. OVO set a cap of £15,000 per property).”
===
Near as I can tell, that adds up to OVER A QUARTER OF THE HOUSES were “unsuitable for a heat pump”.
The real killer quote, however, is this one:
“Properties ‘triaged out’ of the project or not recommended for a heat pump
installation were not necessarily unsuitable for heat pumps, but were less attractive candidates for installation within this project. Suitability of the wider UK housing stock for heat pumps should therefore not be inferred based on this data.”
In other words … the study is useless.
w.
The Study:
https://es.catapult.org.uk/report/electrification-of-heat-home-surveys-and-install-report/
The boiling point of R32 is −52 °C. Heat pumps generate heat by evaporating the refrigerant, so, yes, a heat pump can generate heat at surprising low temperatures.
Here’s the rub:
“7% of properties needed a heat pump larger than products available for this trial to meet property needs”
Just because a heat pump produces heat doesn’t mean it will be adequate. Sizing matters. Loading matters. Ambient temperature range matters.
So, “The only time they will struggle is if temperatures are below minus 20C” is false.
They will struggle if the house is too big.
“Air to air heat pumps are perfectly adequate for heating homes in the UK”
False. They are perfectly adequate for SOME homes. Mr Woodcock’s announcement is just like a government edict. Heat pumps will work for some houses, so EVERYONE must get one.
” Mr Woodcock’s announcement is just like a government edict. ”
It’s yet another attempt at “proof by assertation” ; a common tactic by those supporting the belief and attempting to benefit from the belief.
“Believe! You must believe”
No, that is simply your own point of view and completely without merit. The reality is that I have the experience to know what I am talking about and to back up my statements.
For over a decade I have owned and used my own air source heat pump systems which I had installed to my predesign and specifications. I also designed my own solar array which runs my air source heat pump systems on a sunny day completely free of any cost. During the winter these provide a plentiful supply of heat whenever and wherever I need it at the touch of a remote control button or on timer. They work within two minutes and even without the solar at 60% of the cost of running central heating because the co-efficiency is 6 x that of a gas boiler even though electricity is 3 x the cost per Kwh.
In the summer the heat pumps reverse cycle and air condition my whole home at no cost to me while everyone else sweats their rollox off!
Contrast this with radiators which take ages to heat a room and to cool down, take up space and cant provide cooling. Boiler and radiator technology is as old as the ark, expensive and clumsy.
Air source heat pumps have made my home the most comfortable and cheapest home to run in the neighbourhood. So much so that three of my neighbours have now also installed them.
So please don’t just ape nonsense, find out and experience the technology for yourself. Just to be clear once more….Air to Air NOT air to water!! There is a world of difference as I have explained at the outset.
“I also designed my own solar array which runs my air source heat pump systems on a sunny day completely free of any cost.”
I’m impressed that you were able to get a solar array for free. They are prohibitively expensive around here.
What do you do on cloudy, rainy days?
Whatever, it has to be paid for, too.
” The reality is that I have the experience to know what I am talking about and to back up my statements. ”
There it is again, an attempt at proof by assertation. “Believe me! You must believe me, because I believe that I know what I am talking about”
I’m supposed to believe you because you believe that you know what you are talking about? This is a form of religion.