To think the ambitions for Net Carbon Zero are utterly impossible for most households?

[backoffice]

I’ve been looking at some of the suggestions that are supposed to be “normalised” for consumers to adopt as we move towards lower carbon: heat pumps, solar power, electric vehicles etc.

To adopt any of these is going to cost a family thousands of pounds! Not to mention the practicalities of e.g. heat pumps in tiny houses with little gardens/small roof. It seems utterly unreasonable to expect consumers to adopt these technologies unless they have a lot of money and large properties, but it’s basically what the government seems to expect people to do. AIBU?

@Clymene but the government is banning the sale of new petrol cars after 2030. Almost all properties in my area are terraced houses or flats, cheapest house with a drive in my area is £1.4 million. However, there are some electric charging points and in nearby Muswell hill, I walked through a fairly expensive street (all terraced, no parking, most homes £2 million and up) and it had an electric charging station on the same street. And I expect most people in urban areas to give up their cars

There would be some people caught in no man's land- can't afford a house with drive further out but also can't afford to live in an area with good public transport. That is worrying.

Agreed, you can’t expect people to fund all of this themselves. Governments will need to support with grants and subsidies and other changes to make changes easier (like if you want to get people out of cars, make public transport cheaper/better and make active travel a more appealing option)

We (in Switzerland) got a government grant for our new heat pump that meant it was the same price as a new oil or gas based system.

I feel quite negative

I suspect that many people will be stuck with cold homes they can not sell or rent out with the running expense of 20 year old petrol cars

Just see how they treated leaseholders. with flammable cladding

Further , carbon savings are like pensions , what you save early has most impact . If we hit net zero in 2049 , climate change will be devastating, think starvation and water shortages here like we have seen in Africa

The government should have mandated heat pumps and solar panels for all new builds 10 years ago but didn't . That's lots of unnecessary carbon released

even here people are saying" hydrogen is better"

We haven't got the time to develop and deploy green hydrogen infrastructure

I havnt figured out how people who park on the street are going to charge their electric car yet, and that is the farthest ahead of all those technologies.

Do you have a petrol station at home?

There is a thread on twotter with pics of car charging. Most people don't have off road parking so it's on pavements. Let's just say that groups which post pics of people psrked on pavements to shsme them are now adding charging cars to it.

but the government is banning the sale of new petrol cars after 2030
That will get pushed again, 100%, then used ones will be sold for decades, new cars will be used elsewhere or under rental if allowed which will turn them into used and so on. The infrastructures dtill isn't really there for everyone to have electric and will not be for a looooong time.
I don't think i will have an issue tio buy good quality petrol/diesel cadr in my lifetime. I am 30 and a bit...

DH’s work (a big corporation) are trying to figure out what to do to reduce emissions and reach zero net carbon. The trouble is the technology just doesn’t exist yet. They’ve got the money to invest in the issue but nowhere viable to put it. The only options seem to be carry on pumping out carbon until the technology becomes available, or cease operating. They can take some steps but the impact will be minimal until the technology is there. By which point it will be too late.

I don’t understand the hydrogen argument - how is it a good idea if it’s currently just coming from gas anyway?

Electric/nuclear is the only option isn’t it?

I’ve tried to look at improving my own home but I can’t afford it. With bills for university, subsidising elderly parents and saving for my own pension (all sensible things) there’s not the kind of money left over, although I want to make positive choices.

Am I being cynical wondering if the run-away energy bills are working in the governments favour to force people to use less energy?

Just wondering how much those who have voted IABU have spent on these upgrades? What is reasonable in terms of £x,000?

The technology not being there is also so true. I was sold my condenser boiler 7 years ago as it was the greenest option apparently. Now it needs replacing?

Even the materials needed for EV's are in short supp!y and child Labour is used in the supply, so they aren't as green as people seem to think.

We need investment in viable alternatives, including hydrogen and synthetic fuels to be able to reduce carbon. Bearing in mind that the mini nuclear power stations proposed by government won't be ready until 2050.

I can’t help but think that the “mini nuclear power station” option won’t be very popular with the public - the plan is for them to be EVERYWHERE.

I don’t think most people have a clue about the massive changes that are needed/planned.

[quote onlychildhamster]@FreedomFaith what if it's a requirement of your mortgage? I see that as the only way they can 'enforce it', posted a link upthread.[/quote]
That will likely only really affect the really bad homes, like at g rating to maybe e. My home is at c/d, can't remember which. The mortgage lenders will refuse some if it affects their average score, not going to reject all. The worse your score is, the more likely you are to be rejected. Hopefully won't affect us being at average already.

Governments the world over have spent the last 50 years AT LEAST pretending none of this was happening and neither informing the populace of the facts nor planning for change and now the world over they are all gung ho with 'We can do this', except for the ones that now openly don't give a shit (Bolsonaro and his ilk). 'We can do this' is frankly still a continuation of the simplistic messages that really amount to more lies. I agree with Greta - it's all blah blah blah.
It's all too little, too complex, too difficult and too late.
Just live your life and do your best. It's never going to be anything better than - at best - a muddle and - at worst - a series of disasters and catastrophes.

Our neighbours in our terraced street used to charge their electric car through the letterbox over the pavement (with a good quality ramp over the cable so it didn't seriously inconvenience anyone). Now of course they charge it by plugging it into the street light.

Once all the cars on the street are electric then there will be etiquette problems with who gets first dibs on the limited number of street lights (although there's a set of communal chargers a few minutes walk away). If etiquette doesn't manage it then the camera technology to impose a limited max time at the charging place is not too tricky. But relatively few cars have an full charge's use every single day, and a lot of those will spend the day in a carpark with a charger at the other end.

YANBU

Having looked some of the Net Zero plans, I’ve come to the conclusion that our government resides in cloud cuckoo land and the populace are more likely to vote for an Uber-Farage type figure before we get anywhere near achieving the Net Zero goal, however desirable it might be.

I I mean look around - there are people fighting with knives over petrol ffs.

It will be impossible to reach net zero if the cost is placed on us as individuals. The government needs to fund it. Heat pumps are great in theory but they are expensive to buy and expensive to run. I believe government are bringing in a “clean heat grant” for things like heat pumps so that’s worth keeping an eye out for.

Hydrogen is a distraction - the government has set an ambition but the technology required to make low carbon hydrogen (ie using renewable electricity in a process called electrolysis) is not proven and not available at scale. Also no one is manufacturing fuel cell cars.

Basically the current government are all talk no action and need to put their money where their mouth is if we are going to reach this ambition. Which we absolutely have to for the sake of the planet and every creature living on it.

Hydrogen can be produced from microbes and water splitting methods too, (caveat that this into is from my Dr son who works in the field as an automotive research scientist, I haven't a clue, but I know he and his colleagues have quite strong views on it. !)

Hydrogen comes in 3 types
Green: electrolysed from water using renewable power and effectively used as a battery to store inconsistent wind power. Expensive but definitely green

Blue: extracted from natural gas leaving CO2 which is then pumped back into the original gas reservoirs so it doesn't reach the atmosphere. Challenging and controversial but theoretically green. The UK is geologically well placed to do this.

Grey: extracted from natural gas without capturing the CO2 or electrolysed from water using fossil fuel power. Worst of both worlds although it can still power cars with zero tailpipe emissions.

Most modern gas boilers and cookers can comfortably cope with a mix of 20% hydrogen 80% North Sea gas. But if we wanted to go 100% hydrogen we'd all need new boilers and bits of the infrastructure would need upgrading. Significantly less work than changing all the Victorian terraces of the UK to heat pumps though.

@DdraigGoch

No, mass electric vehicle ownership won't work. Too costly for many and still produces a considerable amount of pollution during manufacture. They also don't solve congestion, so you still need to build new roads (causing more pollution).

We need to wean ourselves off our automobile addiction.

In order to wean people from their vehicles the government would have to find a way to incentivise this while allowing people to make their own arrangements to suit themselves - to do otherwise would be to cause massive resentment.

They could, for instance, work out the total miles travelled and how much they want it to be reduced by to create a personal allowance. Anyone purchasing road tax (as an individual, not for their car) would gain a miles allowance with “countryside” or disability allowances extra - the opposite of London weighting. People could then freely trade their allowances - if you live in a city and are happy to catch the bus, you get to sell your allowance to someone who needs to travel more, or just wants to and can afford to buy extra miles.

If they start banning things, it’ll all end in tears.

Or the government could work on train travel costing less than flying through another country. No one will go and take a train when,even including upkeep costs, car travel will work out cheaper....

This all makes me want to cry. I would so love to be off-grid.

We live away from the road so cannot plug our cars into the household supply. The garages are not on electricity as the block is nowhere near the houses. A couple of people on the road now have electric cars but they are the ones who have drives/level street access. I work for an organisation which wants to build on all the car parks and have us all use public transport, never mind the school runs en route or the distances some of us have to travel without a public alternative. No chance of them putting in charging points - and even so, until all of those are a) fast and b) standardised, which ones would they install?

My town has about 6 slow charge points, period. They've not added any more in years.

I can't afford solar panels and since we're overshadowed by (council) trees and a block of flats (which also have nowhere to charge their cars) they wouldn't work properly anyway. We are considering solar water heating though. More efficient.

I looked into a windmill a while back. No go. They make a lot of incidental noise and are also only able to work if they are plugged into the mains - can't power a house if there is a power cut!! Irony... Maybe that's changed now. I hope so (though the noise would stop us as we have a teeny garden so can't put one out of earshot of everyone)

Truly the thinking is back to front in all areas.

*disclaimer: we are on the Tube network and DC go to school on that now they are old enough. But on the outer part, and if I want to get to work I've got 40 minutes of walking at either end of the day on top of the commute because of where the stations are. Just like many people... Of course I could buy a folding bike, but it would be of limited use because of the hills - I'd still have to walk one way...

When the US and the Russians in particular invest in Hydrogen technology you can safely bet it will become mainstream. Russia in particular wants to dominate the EU energy market, and that will include Hydrogen.

JCB here in the UK have developed a "standard" combustion engine, modified to run on hydrogen, for use in heavy machinery and buses. It's quite interesting.

@Heronatemygoldfish Its often like that for families. The houses further out from the station and need a car are larger and cheaper, so many families pick them. Many have drives so electric cars are possible BUT there aren't enough of them to go around and every NIMBYer would be protesting against any development of abandoned fields. Also larger properties would often be older and it may be very costly to make energy efficient.

The properties near the town centre or in cities are likely to be terraced or flats unless they are very expensive. so those properties might be good for public transport if you are in London or the surrounding towns but they are not good for electric cars.

Its a catch 22 either way.