Heat pumps ‘too expensive for ordinary families’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Heat pumps are too expensive for ordinary families to install and run, the Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho has been warned by MPs.
The Government must urgently make low-carbon heating systems cheaper if it wants to reach its goal of net zero emissions by 2050, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Almost all of the UK’s 28 million households must ditch their gas boilers and decarbonise their heating systems for ministers to achieve their goal of net zero emissions.
Nearly a fifth (18pc) of all UK greenhouse gas emissions come from heating the nation’s homes, the vast bulk of it from burning natural gas.
The Government wants to phase out gas boilers by 2035 and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has a target for Britain to be installing 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028, up from just 55,000 in 2021.
But high costs for households mean uptake has so far been slow and the Government is not on track to meet this target.
The PAC report said: “The cost of buying and running heat pumps is a substantial barrier to take-up for most households, at a time when incomes are already stretched.”
An average heat pump costs £11,600, four times more than a gas boiler.
The Government aims to reduce heat pump installation costs by 25pc by 2025, but so far they have only fallen by 6pc since 2021.
The PAC report said: “Costs need to come down much quicker.”
Heat pumps are also more expensive to run than traditional boilers because they use electricity, which costs more than gas, the report said.
The costs are so high that government grants are likely only being used by rich people.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/26/heat-pumps-too-expensive-ordinary-families/
What is most significant in this latest report is that MPs are now admitting that running costs for heat pumps are also higher then a gas boiler, something I have been pointing out for years.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
When the carnival float of Nut Zero … encounters the tank-stopping bollards of reality.
The simple basic law of enerconics is that the price of something is closely related to energy used to produce it. So, if you want to improve energy efficiency, you let the market decide. But if you want to virtue signal … you let governments intervene to INCREASE PRICES …. which means REDUCE ENERGY EFFICIENCY (when all things are considered)
‘The carnival float of Nut Zero…encounters the tank-stopping bollards of reality’, brings such a wonderful vison to my minds eye. Thank you.
The PAC report said: “Costs need to come down much quicker.”
CLASSIC delusional comment from a governmental body living in green La-La Land.
It hasn’t happened yet and it’s not going to happen because the kit ain’t exactly cheap to manufacture, import (usually) and install and, in the real world, manufacturers and installers aren’t going to produce goods and provide services at a loss.
So, apart from the bleedin’ obvious “scrap the targets”, what’s the answer? Oh, subsidise the pumps with even more taxpayers’ cash. Oh hang on, we’ve tried that a couple of times now and it hasn’t worked. How about even more subsidies?
But costs are not going to come down .
A Government report in 2016 found that to switch to electric home heating would need a 400% increase in generation capacity , plus the £ Billions to upgrade the whole grid across the country .
Which is why a report says that Net Zero would cost every family an extra £6000 per year .
But they will never let facts stand in the way of their plans to destroy the economy .https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
Heat pumps are mature technology – they’ve been in use around the world for many decades. There’s no reason why costs would suddenly drop, unless UK prices are out of line with, say, our European neighbours.
But they won’t let that stop them blundering ahead with manic policies.
The cost to the public doesn’t matter when you are “saving the world”.t
The world according to Miliband:
“What will happen if a sizeable proportion of the population simply refuse to install [heat pumps]?
‘Well, we would quite obviously have to look at some form of compulsion, be that via new legislation, or possibly making it a criminal offence punishable by prison to operate a gas boiler domestically.’””
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/to-net-zero-and-beyond-the-world-according-to-ed-miliband/
NUT zero.
I guess when the country (Whitehall and Westminster) are run by PPEs (who’s first P is Socialism and who don’t understand the E), this insane policy is what you would expect.
The Govt’s answer? Switch all green subsidy costs on to gas. Simples.
That is exactly what they are going to do.
But in the medium term it won’t help. The excess costs still have to be picked up somewhere in the UK economy, the damage will still be done.
And thus, as is the case with electric cars, the result is regressive taxation.
Yep.
Ipso facto, ‘ordinary families’ ARE paying for heat pumps. Somebody else’s.
when department of Energy numpties can’t even do fag packet calcs to work out the cost of heat pump produced heat in a house compared to a gas boiler produced heat, then we know we are in trouble.
“Jeremy Mark Pocklington CB (born 13 October 1973) is a British civil servant who has served as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero since February 2023. He served as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) from March 2020 (when it was the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)) to February 2023. He was formerly Director General for Housing and Planning at the MHCLG, having served in that role from August 2018 until his appointment as Permanent Secretary at the MHCLG.[2]
“Pocklington was born on 13 October 1973. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School. He later studied at Exeter College in the University of Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern History in 1995. He later went on to graduate with a Master of Philosophy in Economics and Social History with distinction in 1997 from the same college.”
This is from the Wiki-thingy that everyone can edit, at about 1530 BST today; so I do not vouch for its complete accuracy.
That said, it is unclear if the Great Pocklington could calculate mpg – let alone costs. I suspect that is common to many of our leaders in Whitehall and Westminster.
Why do these innumerates get put in charge of departments where basic numeracy and scientific knowledge should be a prerequisite?
[Rhetorical] – they’re our finest minds, part of our Rolls Royce of a Civil Service.
I weep for my country.
Auto
“An average heat pump costs £11,600, four times more than a gas boiler.“
I own 3 rental properties. Over the last 6 years I have bought 4 combi boilers (including one for my own home) and this is actually how relatively cheap they have become.
https://www.screwfix.com/p/biasi-basica-24c-gas-combi-boiler-white/337rf
I make £11,600 over 19 times the price of a combi boiler that has a 5 year guarantee. The swap over for boiler replacement is barely a day’s labour. The new fit labour cost for an entire central heating system is of the order of a fifth that of a heat pump as the latter requires large amounts of large bore piping, storage tanks (plus the space to put them), separate pumps and controls, pressure vessels et alia.
You simply ain’t gonna get change out of more than £25K for most new air to water heat pump installations. Your energy bills will rise dramatically and you will not be as warm. Never mind though because it ain’t gonna happen….600,000 installations a year? You are having a giraffe!
Living your lives to achieve ministers’ goals.
Millions of UK homes have gas combi boilers, where the gas can be used to heat water on demand and no hot water cylinder is needed. Conversion in such homes to heat pumps means the hot water supply has to be heated by electricity, with no big cylinder for pre-heating water at cheaper overnight rates.
It’s Ok. Keir’s GB Energy will dramatically lower the cost of electricity and all will be fine!
So, The PAC report said: “Costs need to come down much quicker.”. This is clearly not possible, so carbon taxes will be implemented to “save the planet” , i.e. to make gas uneconomic and freeze the poor out of existence as cold is the real killer not heat.
The CCC and this stupid Energy Minister Claire Coutinho are happy to sit and fiddle while Rome burns. coutinho has already stated that she plans to move the Green Subsidies from Electric to Gas so that suddenly Electricity becomes “cheaper” than Gas and a conclusive argument that ASHP are the way forward regardless of cost and the fact they are inefficient- it’s just a case of loading punitive taxes on the key source of Heating and Cooking for the majority (gas) to mask the fact that whilst we are “saving” the planet we are increasing the gap between the ability to Heat and Eat. Totally out of touch with reality, but Labour, Green, Liberal, SNP, Plaid Cymru also believe that this is the “way” forward. It’s a shit show that typifies the UK.
Over 22m households in the UK are on the gas network. If Coutinho is in the next Government and does move the green subsidies from electricity to gas she is going to upset an awful lot of people. Likewise any Labour minister.
Please Please PLEASE will someone reading this, who knows someone who is an MP or betah a Cabinet minister who supports the NutZero fraud, ask them to please point to the crucial empirical data that shows the need for all of this.
We are told that CO2 is driving global warming and by an arts graduate understanding, Climate Change. We are also told repeatedly it is all about the science and follow the science. So!
Here is the question to ask.
“Please can you point to the statistically significant Empirical Data which supports the claim that CO2 returned to the Carbon Cycle by the actions of man has in any measurable way been shown to be responsible for all or part of the current warming, the fourth such warming in recent human history. If it is only “part” then how big a part because the three preceding warmings clearly happened due to natural causes.
This has to be the most famous data of all time.
“If you cannot point to this data then what you are supporting is a politically driven lie and not something based on science. No empirical data, NO SCIENCE Q.E.D. There is no third way”.
Tinkerbell Effect.
CLAP, YOU BASTARDS !!!!
There is one problem that cannot be solved no matter how high the grants are. The Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA) analysed almost 23m homes in the UK and found that 12m of them had “limiting factors” to installing heat pumps, one of the most common being lack of space for the installation.
They also said the cost of the heat pumps and of any alterations such as larger radiators, under floor heating, addition of an immersion tank, double glazing etc meant the installation was beyond many peoples resources even if they could get a government grant.
Some years ago government required gas suppliers to bill in price per kWh which allows direct price comparison between fuels.
And conveniently makes heat pump sums easy. If they operate at 3:1 you break even if elec is 3x gas. As it’s now 4x you lose
There is absolutely no point in purchasing an expensive heat pump, even with subsidies. It will not be possible to use for most of the time because the local grid can only take 1 – 2KW per household continuously. So 5KW heat pumps in cold weather together with 7 KW charging evs are impossible. Better to use the rationed electricity for the immersion heater to avoid Legionnaire’s disease and portable far infrared heaters.
The only way to get enough ‘green’ energy to UK homes for heating is to use green methane. BTW, the EU has classed methane (natural gas) as ‘green’.
The lack of capacity of the local grid explains why there is no plan for grid-scale electricity storage for even 2050 let alone 2035.
Is that the methane available in Lancashire and elsewhere if a government allows fracking?
Or should we expensively and wastefully import US fracking gas?
Yes, lets save CO2 by transporting gas in a diesel ship across the Atlantic, rather than harvesting what’s under our very feet!