Posted by: @jamespa

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For me at least, decarbonisation has be something of a revelation.

I agree.  My background is in financing major projects, and so now when retired I love to find new "projects" of my own to undertake (much to my wife's exasperation).  Hence the solar, batteries and ASHP over the last 3 years or so.

I can't help thinking that HMG's approach to marketing renewables has been typically wrong-headed.  If they had leaked that there was a new highly-efficient home heating system in the works - but you have to be on a special list of invitees to be eligible - then the popular press would have been all over it immediately demanding it be made available to the common man.

Then they could have said  - sorry, it's really great but we don't have enough skilled installers trained up yet, you'll have to wait n years before you can get on the list...

... the clamour would have escalated and there would be questions in parliament about setting up a Minister for ASHP Training and all manner of hullabaloo.

Job done.

Same for EVs.  They're much faster, smoother, quieter and cheaper to run.  But you can't have one yet.

@editor Perhaps it is just the way I read that but it seems to me that the MCS concern is for the installers and very little for the homeowner. Should I be surprised? Toodles.

@editor

According to The Guardian, Rachel Reeves plans to limit heat pump grants so that only lower-income households can access them. In other words, most middle-class homeowners will lose eligibility for the £7,500 BUS subsidy.

This is the most dumbf*** move of a whole run of British DF moves that are going to have a really negative impact on decarbonisation.

First we need to stop the stereotypes - I'm not 'middle class' but I replaced my deceased gas boiler with a heat pump and took out a loan to do it. Without BUS that would've been impossible. 

I'm one of those people who qualified for ECO fitting due to low earnings but I couldn't get an ECO fitter to play because they make their money by forcing up the EPC bands and mine was going no further than it already was.

I also wanted to be in control and choose my heat pump and my fitters as far as possible.  ECO won't let you do that. It's the usual 'beggars can't be choosers' mentality this country loves so much. 

Everyone who gets ECO is a homeowner so it's income-based one way or another but quite selective. Shared ownership people can't fit heat pumps for example.

This means that if I move home I will never have another heat pump because of the above. I will be forced to go back to gas. That's so depressing. Meanwhile, my dream of owning an EV one day just slips away... 

As someone further up this thread said, the BUS was about incentivising heat pumps and decarbonisation not a bung. The grant is fixed on a house not a person so every installation is another property off the carbon list.

As some of you know, I'm working on a big Europe-wide decarbonisation research project and while it's still early stages I can tell you that compared to other countries Britain has the most chaotic, undefined, incoherent and bitty decarbonisation policies possibly out of the lot. It makes planning, investment and public comprehension impossible. 

Interesting to see Shell hand back a floating wind farm project as they decided not to proceed and couldn't find anyone to buy the option. 

It had what looked like a generous CfD but the cost of deployment seems to be in doubt. 

The strike price for the latest AR7 off shore floating wind  bids was set at 271 £/MWh, in 2024 prices, significantly more than the average price of electricity in the UK now.

Be interesting to see what the actual bids are next year for AR7 vs the £271.

https://www.rechargenews.com/markets-and-finance/shell-quits-giant-floating-projects-in-blow-to-scotwind/2-1-1898503

Also be interesting to see how much floating wind capacity is actually deployed by 2050 given the high costs.

@lucia No change there then! We thrive on being mediocre! Toodles (Enjoying our heat pump every day but would appreciate a little less of the grey skies).

Certainly and interesting and passionate debate on the BUS grant. 

I suppect it will have to be tweaked at some stage. 

Heat pumps installs didn't really take off until the grant was increased from £5000 to £7500.

At £7500, the 600,000 installs a year future target, assuming for simplicity all had the BUS grant, would cost the government £4.5 billion a year for several years. I just can't see any government raising taxes to do that. The BUS grant comes out of general taxation. 

How the government gradually reduce their potential annual exposure and target the money won't be easy, while keeping momentum going. It doesn't necessarily mean someone like @lucia wouldn't  get any grant in the future, but they are unlikely to get as much under any scenario and any government I suspect. 

Without drifting into politics, I am not generally comfortable giving a millionaire my taxes to install a heat pump, but am more than happy for my taxes to pay for a heat pump in a home of someone who couldn't afford it. So the net number of heat pump installations increases. 

I remember @toodles saying he would have installed a heat pump without a grant. Am sure he is not alone. Setting the expectation that some people won't get a grant at some date in the future is going to have to happen I suspect under any government and any scenario. 

I really liked the post from @downfield about the government getting the messaging right, including the benefits and costs. I think that is critical.

I would quote more posters but I haven't read all the posts, am sure there are lots of great points. 

For context the Eco4 fund currently on our bills from April 2022 to March 2026 is £4 billion in total. 

Posted by: @jeff

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I really liked the post from @downfield about the government getting the messaging right, including the benefits and costs. I think that is critical. 

Not just the government though, also the industry.  @downfield was recalling my comment that, at least for me, my EV and Heat pump are both a serious upgrade in functionality and comfort (thus inherently more valuable) yet heat pumps certainly are not sold on this basis.  If the were people would pay a premium!

There are of course two problems namely

• that the heat pump installation industry is very variable and, whilst many installations go well others are pretty disastrous
• the majority of the media is controlled by people in whose interests it is to deny climate change and rubbish heat pumps

Somehow that needs to be overcome so that people positively desire things, like EVs and heat pumps, that are greener.  For EVs its almost done, oddly enough by Musk.  For heat pumps we havent yet got there, somehow we need to, 

The constant changes, including naming and new schemes will maintain confusion. Most of the content around on sites and even brochures will not change overnight. So people will just waste effort to eventually find they do not qualify for a grant. 

@jamespa totally agree with all your points, I haven't read all the posts as I rarely look at the forum these days

I would add for EVs in the UK, the eye watering tax advantages of EVs as company cars I suspect has been by far the biggest driver.

The low taxation on EV milage vs petrol is also eye watering and clearly unsustainable for much longer.

The transition away from EV subsidies on company cars and some sort of pay per mile tax will have to happen, just like the wind down of the BUS scheme. 

Posted by: @batpred

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The constant changes, including naming and new schemes will maintain confusion. Most of the content around on sites and even brochures will not change overnight. So people will just waste effort to eventually find they do not qualify for a grant. 

 

Totally agree, it needs to be simple messages and clear guidelines. 

Posted by: @jeff

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I really liked the post from @downfield about the government getting the messaging right, including the benefits and costs. I think that is critical. 

Not just the government though, also the industry.  @downfield was recalling my comment that, at least for me, my EV and Heat pump are both a serious upgrade in functionality and comfort (thus inherently more valuable) yet heat pumps certainly are not sold on this basis.  If the were people would pay a premium!

There are of course two problems namely

• that the heat pump installation industry is very variable and, whilst many installations go well others are pretty disastrous which seriously undermines the message
• the majority of the media is controlled by people in whose interests it is to deny climate change and rubbish heat pumps

Somehow that needs to be overcome so that people positively desire things, like EVs and heat pumps, that are greener.  For EVs its almost done, oddly enough by Musk.  For heat pumps we havent yet got there, somehow we need to, 

Posted by: @lucia

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This is the most dumbf*** move of a whole run of British DF moves that are going to have a really negative impact on decarbonisation.

I am sorry to say that in my view comments of this kind are highly self-defeating.  If those who support the green agenda cast this government (which clearly also supports the green agenda) as 'dumb', they are playing into the hands of those who don't support the green agenda.  The likely alternative UK governments after the next election have committed to abandoning the green agenda entirely.

We need to recognise that government is hard, about often impossible choices between conflicting objectives.  Some we wont like, which does not mean they are dumb!

I am not defending or supporting the decision (if indeed it is one), just pointing out that there are tough choices that the one dimensional analysis so often made doesn't properly explore.

Posted by: @jeff

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I remember @toodles saying he would have installed a heat pump without a grant. Am sure he is not alone. Setting the expectation that some people won't get a grant at some date in the future is going to have to happen I suspect under any government and any scenario. 

If the Government remove the grant then they should also be removing some of rigid and inflexible installation standards which push up the cost of installations, adding flexibility to bring down the cost of installations.

A few examples spring to mind - the rigid and formulaic approach to hot water cylinder sizing which can require much larger cylinders, needing costly relocation to other parts of the property or alternations to walls/cupboards etc.

Marginally sized radiators, which are slightly under the calculated heat output requirements, but where there's additional heat sources or rooms are not used, so in practice not a problem for the homeowner.

With a big government grant funding the installation and sufficient to include all of these extra costs, then it's reasonable to insist on all of these so it will work perfectly for both the current and future homeowners. But if the homeowner is paying for the installation themselves then it needs to be more pragmatic, closer to a boiler replacement, with the homeowner having more say over whether they want other parts of the system upgraded, with the flexibility to keep radiators and opt for smaller or different hot water cylinder options to keep the installation costs down to something affordable.