@editor 

CCS is surely the one not delivering and that should obvs be cut, not ASHP.. 

@editor Do you think it will be for the better or we will see the collapse of the ASHP industry as we know it, think about the amount of money and time gone into all of this and now imagine, I assume they will scrap the penalty that boiler manufacturers get for not selling enough ASHP's if they are going to remove commitments intended to support the start of the market.

My view is they should not be allowed to cut it off in 1 hit but I would support a reduction at 20% per year for the next 5 years, if they cut it off in 1 month they may end up paying some of that money in social welfare support payments to people loosing their jobs. I also think it would make multiple engineers retire early or pull away from the industry all together considering how volatile it has become with compliance.

Compliance:- no grant no need for MCS going forward, no need to commission, no need to have anything checked other than CPS and also it will make them cheaper by a mile but you will get cheaper corner cut installations. Perhaps this Zero disrupt model is in good time, every job now will end up as a boiler swap and the client told change your own rads, we did not allow for that.

Lastly and probably the best thing, if this happens A2A will be the better option all day long, the UK will be the next Spain for split bashing, a lot of houses will have boxes heating half the house and keep the boilers for dead of winter, the result will be no gas removal just less dependance, a lot of people have been asking for this model, its not right but might not be wrong either but it misses the Governments point all together, removing gas was the goal.

Perhaps they will keep the government back loan part, that may work or put more into that as it does not actually use much of the money, as its paid back it can support the next loan going forward and so on?

I have more to say but I want to keep within the rules and not be political which is hard to do here as this is a politicly motivated decision to scrap a promiss to an industry that spent a long time and a lot of money to get here.

In the end we AAC Group will be fine as we are 90% AC and commercial and thats only going to grow over the next decade but if enough changes around the domestic ASHP industry then it will loose us from the domestic market which might be a shame and I don't doubt countless other very good installers will follow and that's no great in a market where there are not so many great installers.  

I think the goal is reducing CO2 emissions, rather than removing gas boilers per se - that's a mechanism that is being used as a pathway towards the goal. One of my bug bears is when Govt. effectively mandates a specific technology and subsidies that rather than setting a goal in terms of what actually matters (CO2 reduction in this case) and then provide subsidies in a technology agnostic way to support that goal, thus letting industry and technological development find the most cost effective solutions.

Arguably in the short to medium term, much bigger reductions in CO2 could be achieved via the rapid and widespread adoption of A2A to run alongside gas heating in millions of homes on the basis of being both lower cost and zero carbon emissions. No extra incentive would be needed to get people to make use of A2A for heating other than looking at their own bank balances. A SCOP of 5 and half price electricity on a heat pump tariff results in a large proportion of heating costs at around 30-40% the price of gas. Of course there is also the added bonus of cooling and dehumidifying in summer. Take up could be very fast compared to A2W, since single-split A2A installs can easily be done in a day, and the level of disruption is absolutely minimal, far less than A2W "zero-disrupt". Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of A2A in the mainstream media with ideological resistance on the grounds that it uses additional energy in summer, forgetting that excess Solar PV production negates that concern. The general public seem to have very little awareness of A2A other than thinking of it as Air-Conditioning rather than something that can also provide very efficient heating. Hopefully that will gradually change.

A million homes a year halving their CO2 emissions from heating via A2A, is ten times the reduction in CO2 emissions compared to 50,000 homes becoming zero emission on heating via A2W. It's a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good!

NESTA suggested a tapering of the BUS grant, to gradually phase it out over a period of years, hopefully that is what will be done otherwise the circa 1800 active installers registered under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme may well be in trouble. Perhaps they will pivot to A2A installs. After the heat waves this summer, there is so much demand for domestic A2A that installers are having to delay work because they simply cannot get the hardware and parts needed fast enough.

@rob-of-york Agreed, a hybrid approach has always been championed but never supported so far by the Gov. I also agree that the use of AC in the summer as well as heating in the winter is lower C02 emissions due to the vast saving on the C02 in the 1st place, that and if mixed with Solar it is a no brainer. 

Perhaps everyone can change to AC installs but not in a 2 week period if the grant is cancelled as of the 1st of January 2027 as you cannot get any equipment with the rate of demand now let alone if 1800 more adding to the installation network.

I suppose lets see what happens as we have been here a couple times before and the BUS was generally left alone. If we are this broke then I think the BUS going will be the least of our problems or at least only a problem for a few thousand companies, the bigger hit will be multiple other things cancelled and taxes being adjusted so maybe its inevitable that things will just get much harder for the next 15 years, after all no one said the good days were here to last. Either way best of luck to all those in the ASHP industry and any other areas effected over the next 5 years.

Posted by: @ashp-bobba

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Do you think it will be for the better or we will see the collapse of the ASHP industry as we know it,

Well that's the sort of radical thinking we need at the moment. 🙂 

Overall I think the heat-pump schemes are their own worst enemy. We all know of botched installations, and that makes householders reluctant to consider a heat pump for their own home.

Is this perhaps the moment to reduce the BUS grant to £5500, but allocate £500 of that to Local Planning Authorities to undertake Building Regs inspections? At least we could then trust the Part-L compliancy certificates which those LPAs are currently obliged to send out.

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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I think the goal is reducing CO2 emissions, rather than removing gas boilers per se - that's a mechanism that is being used as a pathway towards the goal. One of my bug bears is when Govt. effectively mandates a specific technology and subsidies that rather than setting a goal in terms of what actually matters (CO2 reduction in this case) and then provide subsidies in a technology agnostic way to support that goal, thus letting industry and technological development find the most cost effective solutions.

...

I agree, but with a caveat.

I remember some time ago watching a TED talk about strategic planning for reduction of carbon emissions and it suggested that if people can be encouraged onto one form of power (e.g. electricity) then it is possible to get far more leverage for savings at point of generation than if one has to juggle investment across multiple power sources. A hybrid approach will cut the home's CO2 emissions but may well adversely impact the government's options at a higher level. In practice, I suspect it's nowhere near as clear cut as that, but it's a point to consider nonetheless.