AIBU to think that the Tories are utterly wicked to drop net zero?

[Upsizer]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/rishi-sunak-planning-drop-net-zero-policies-pre-election-challenge-labour

I think this is genuinely wicked but I guess it was inevitable with the easiness of drumming up a culture war over environmental issues to win votes. Environment is the new Brexit.

Fighting climate change is going to cost all of us thousands of pounds. So we won’t do it - to get votes.

Our children will live on an island suffering extremes of heat and fighting off refugees from uninhabitable parts of the world.

But it will save us some cash I guess.

AIBU to think this is wicked?

But if you currently have a new gas boiler, you won’t be looking to replace it. Nobody has ever proposed ripping out perfectly good new boilers. That was just one of Sunak’s ridiculous straw man statements, like taxes on meat 🙄

The point is that when you are looking to replace your old boiler, you won’t be worse off in terms of monthly bills if you chose a ASHP over a gas boiler. £8 difference is basically making it clear they’re cost equivalent.

You will, however, pay less monthly than you currently do if you currently have an end-of-life old boiler and you swap it for a heat pump. And if the gov get their incentives right, you won’t pay more for installation either.

It is also a fact rarely mentioned that gas boilers are terrible for air quality. Gas hobs are terrible for indoor air quality. Swapping out both for electric is not dissimilar to the change from coal fires and coal ranges in terms of benefits to your personal air quality - it should be a no-brainer!

Yes, £8 a year. So only 1,750yrs before you break even if you put in a ASHP.

I have actually had an ASHP myself (not in present house) and I found it astronomical to run compared to a previous boiler and it also kept breaking down every month or so. It was also in a well insulated newly built house.

So why this big push to move us all onto ASHP, electric cars etc when it is effectively being fuelled by 42% gas and through a process that is expensive?
Sort source of electricity first surely? Makes zero sense to me to froce us to move to electricity through policy when it is effectively an expensive converted gasso not green at all

I think reducing consumption is really important, but the people who want these kinds of policies don't seem to care if they are actually real.

Electric cars are a good example. They are an environmental disaster. Even if you take the electricity to make them run out of it. The mining required to keep people in electric cars would strip the planet worse than oil ever has (and it has, a lot.) Mining for heavy metals like that is hugely polluting, requires huge strip mining operations, tends to be exploitative of vulnerable populations, and then - it's questionable if there is even enough of some metals to supply our needs in the at all.

Yet people just won't hear it, they are too tied up in these supposed solutions.

BEIS are funding quite a few, but I think a lot are R&D/prototype level rather than ready for rollout.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/longer-duration-energy-storage-demonstration-programme-successful-projects#:~:text=The%20Departments%20for%20Energy%20Security,Stream%201%20(Phase%201%20and

Heat pumps aren't great if you have microbore pipe work because it restricts the flow rate you can have. If means your COP won't be as good because you can't optimise one of the factors.

Not so much backed out as ran out of money. The U.K. isn’t as wealthy as it was a decade ago. (The Tories caused a lot of this)

The original plans that were scaled back were over a decade ago. And now they are all about CCS again, it’s just that now we’re over a decade behind where we could have been. There’s a lesson to be learned there

Energy security infrastructure would be expanding our oil and gas fields which Sunak decided to do and that then caused hypocritical outcry from all the environmental activists who misrepresented it as a commitment to increase oil and dependency when it is really ensuring a domestic supply that tapers off as we approach net zero

The extra bit of policy you would need for this to be true is an export ban on that oil and gas, otherwise it will go onto international markets. It’s not ing-fenced for domestic use.

I have an ASHP (mercifully not for my main heating). I can hear it 50 metres away, it costs a lot in electricity and breaks so often that I'm on my third in 10 years.

Apart from that, they're great...

It's totally unrealistic, net zero is not possible in a house where 75% of properties are old builds and not suitable for heat pumps, most of them can't be made suitable either.
Cars are even worse: electric isn't the solution and never will be, its just shifting the problem around in a way that suits no one. It completely ignores how many people can't charge a vehicle because they don't have a drive or a parking space or local infrastructure.

Plus putting the entire population through unrealistic pain when China, Russia and USA are not doing anything means its wasted effort. The UK cannot make a difference and should not be making people suffer for it.
I'm not saying that's a situation I'm happy about but it's true.

I don't want a heat pump. They are hopeless and very expensive to run. Electric cars are a ridiculous idea. We are a small country. Let the larger countries take the lead. Their changes will have more impact.

Right but hang on. If you are needing to replace an old gas boiler it's going to be pretty bloody tempting to do a straightforward swap with a new gas boiler, rather than swap to an ASHP, if for the ASHP you are going to need to pay for insulation, changes to your heating system, move things around to accommodate the larger equipment, install an immersion heater etc. That's potentially a lot of additional expense and inconvenience, which you wouldn't break even on fast with a mere £8 per annum saving - and that saving seems to be if you are lucky as with current energy prices and for my home spec the best estimate is running at a loss.

And yes I know the government might cover some of that additional expense but often it won't be all of it, plus there is the fact aspect.

The incentives make it just about doable - but definitely not appealing.

Fact = faff

Might be worth considering who has been in power for the last 13 years, who set these targets, who has kept the ban on Hybrid cars (an ideal solution) who scrapped home insulation grants and who has watered down new house build regs....

Yet stands there and tells us its nothing to do with him and he'll scrap these disastrous policies Labour gave us! incredible!

On noise from ASHP 's, i walk past one most days, its a 3 yo Daiken, it certainly makes far less noise than i hear from gas or oil boiler outlet, the owner is very happy with it, installed into an old 1950s bungalow.

I just linked overview as there are a fair few types

The one people seem to be talking about is £14k

The cost of an air source heat pump varies depending on the size of heat pump, the size of the property, whether it’s a newbuild or an existing property, as well as whether you need to change the way you distribute heat around your property. Typical costs are around £14,000, and we recommend speaking to at least three installers

The idea is at some point we move onto non fossil fuel generated electricity for all our energy needs.

There are several issues with this though. One is the relative unpredictability of renewable sources, which makes it difficult to ensure demand is satisfied in all circumstances. For example for electricity generation we are now very dependent on wind. But the variability of wind power is huge. Sometimes we can generation 50% of our electricity with wind. Sometimes it drops to almost zero. The problem is what happens if it drops to almost zero when everyone wants the electricity. This is why the government is still pursuing nuclear, and energy storage is a hot issue.

The next is actually building enough renewable resource to replace existing fossil fuels. For example, our current electricity generation doesn't cover the fossil fuels we use for a significant proportion of transport and domestic heating. So we not only have to green the current electricity generation, we also have to expand it, I think by at least a factor of 2.

The final one is ensuring that all that electricity can actually get to consumers by expanding the grid. All that increased amount of electricity we want to use for domestic heating and charging cars is going to need massive upgrades in grid capacity - essentially bigger pipes to get the electricity to where it needs to get to.

So there are significant challenges ahead in greening our electricity supply.

I think the government does have some vetos. For example we import gas from Norway, but I think the government has a potential veto on re-exporting that via the European links it if the gas businesses wanted to do that.

Whether the government could practically use that veto, I don't know. For example it would have far ranging consequences on how with interact with other countries for energy supplies in the future, and whether or not businesses would be willing to invest in both oil and gas production and interconnection infrastructure - basically a lot of interconnection infrastructure is funded based on the fact that businesses can get the best price for the energy they generate.

The "liquidity" in energy markets (gas and electric) is to some degree limited by the interconnection, which is improving all the time.

So there are significant challenges ahead in greening our electricity supply.

There are. The IEA publishes some interesting reports on the mineral supply issues that are likely to arise with the need to ramp up energy storage.

Personally I am not a fan of "mineral resource scarcity" scare stories.

Over the years there have been lots of these. Indium I remember a couple of years ago. Elements for battery manufacture (lithium, colbalt) and permanent magnet build (rare earths) have also been a hot topic recently.

The thing is though the technology advances rapidly, and there are always substitutes that may not be quite as good, but are good enough.

For example scarcity of silver was supposed to be a big issue for solar panels, result is researchers have found ways of using much less of it. Colbalt was a big issue for batteries, now they are starting to make colbalt free batteries.

I do think mineral resources have an effect, for example rare earths are relatively single sourced (China) and are used in strong magnets to generate wind power. I think that some wind farm deployment is being delayed because of problems with these. But it is always possible to get round them (at least for wind turbines) if necessary.

Copper is a hard one to get around. It is relatively high performing (I think second best for transmission of electricity) and expansion of the electricity grid requires a lot of it. Other materials could be used, and there are high technology solutions, but there is no easy replacement for it and the sheer amount of the stuff we need.

Anyway, a bit teccy. TLDR, I think we will be able to get round most of the issues re mineral resources, but copper is a harder one for me to see a way past at the moment.

Yes. I totally understand all of that, my question was why are individuals being pushed when the infrastructure is not anywhere near being ready, bring thr infrastructure vloser to the goal before making individuals pay out for expensive alternatives that effectively are worse for the environment currently was my point

Really wish people would stop saying “China etc are not doing anything.” China is adding renewables at a breakneck pace, seriously. But, let’s face it - if the story is that China is doing nothing, this is used to justify the UK doing nothing because “nothing we do will make any difference”; if the story is that China is doing a lot, this is also used to justify the UK doing nothing because “Well, China’s doing it all, we don’t need to.”

The UK is full of the sort of people who want to make the absolute minimum effort in everything they do, moan a lot, and wait for other people to do all the work for them. It’s a very sorry sight.

Because that makes no commercial sense.

You build the infrastructure as you need it. You don't build it all then have it sitting around idle with massive overcapacity for 10 years while everyone then makes the transition.

It is a bit of a balancing act though. I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was some house building not going on in London at the moment because there was not enough infrastructure to link it into the grid.

What have you done? Have you upgraded your home with a heat pump etc

EV, solar panels? Cut back flying and all that