PAUL HOMEWOOD
ED MILIBAND has launched his Warm Homes Plan to the adulation of the BBC and renewable lobby.
The BBC reported: ‘Households will be eligible for thousands of pounds’ worth of solar panels and other green tech to lower their energy bills, the government has announced.
‘The long-awaited Warm Homes Plan promises to provide £15billion to households across the UK over the next five years.
‘The Government has said it wants to create a “rooftop revolution”, tripling the number of homes with solar, and lifting one million people out of fuel poverty.’
What the BBC forgot to tell its readers was that it will be taxpayers who end up paying the bill for this latest nonsense. Households will be over £500 worse off on average as a result.
About a third of the funding will be handed over to low-income households, but most will be in the form of low-interest loans, which will have to be repaid.
There have been several similar schemes in the last couple of decades. They all have one thing in common – very few people took them up.
It is difficult to see why this latest wheeze will be any different. People are naturally reluctant to borrow large sums of money, even if they offer potential savings. Nor do they want the hassle of installing heat pumps and solar panels.
If solar panels were so cheap, people would be queueing to buy them, without the need for subsidies.
Fitting solar panels and a battery to a typical home would cost around £10,000, but would still provide only a fraction of the electricity needed in winter months, when sunshine is in short supply.
And when they pack up after ten or 15 years, where will you get the money to replace them? They will most likely end up being left on rooftops to rot, reducing the value of your home.
Given that annual electricity bills are about £800 and the solar panels would last at best 15 years, it does not take a genius to work out that you won’t save much money, if any. The interest on a loan would immediately cancel any savings on electricity bills.
Worse still, heat pumps are not only unaffordable for most people, they actually cost much more than a gas boiler to run.
Encouraging people to take out loans, which they cannot afford to repay, on the promise that they will save money on energy bills, is fraudulent. If a double-glazing company did it, they would probably end up in court.
It is even worse for low-income households, which will be encouraged to chuck out gas boilers and then find they are stuck with heat pumps which not only cost more to run but don’t even heat their homes properly.
There is no financial justification whatsoever for this splurging of £15billion. Taxpayers are on the hook once again for Ed Miliband’s mad obsession with climate change.
Government gaslighting about heat pumps
If Net Zero targets are to be met, a million gas boilers a year will soon have to be replaced by heat pumps. A fifth of UK energy is used for heating our homes with gas and that means an estimated 20million boilers must go in the next two decades.
Replacing them all with conventional electrical heaters is not possible because the power grid would be quickly overwhelmed, hence the need for heat pumps, which use about a third as much electricity.
But as we have seen, virtually nobody wants to buy them and for good reason. In spite of obscene subsidies of £7,500, sales of heat pumps under government schemes totalled just 35,000 in the first nine months of last year.
To persuade the public to switch, the Government is running a campaign falsely claiming that heat pumps are cheaper to run. They claim that you can save around £100 a year.
https://cleanenergy.campaign.gov.uk/heat-pump/
According to Ofgem, a three-bedroom house typically uses 11,500kWh of gas a year, which costs £677, not ‘£2,000’.
By its own admission, heat pumps cost much more to run. This is not surprising, given that the energy price cap is set at 28.45p per kWh for electricity and 5.89p for gas. Even though heat pumps use a third of the energy, they still work out almost twice as expensive to run.
The campaign inadvertently sums up why few people want heat pumps. For a three-bedroom home, a heat pump would cost between £13,000 and £15,000.
That does not include the cost of new radiators, insulation and a hot water tank, all of which would be required in the vast majority of houses. You would be lucky to get change out of £20,000 for that lot. Where on earth do they think people can find that sort of money?
You will also need indoor space for a hot-water tank. Good luck with that – we knocked our old immersion tank out years ago, to create more storage space.
Meanwhile, back in La La Land, Miliband has set a target of 450,000 heat pump installations by 2030.
This article (The climate scaremongers: Mad Ed must have a slate loose if he thinks he can rip us off with his ‘rooftop revolution’) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Paul Homewood
See Related Article Below
UK to spend 15 billion pounds directly heating the atmosphere outside homes
stupid is as stupid does
PETER HALLIGAN
From here;
The ‘fatal flaw’ in the new Warm Homes Plan revealed
In yet another move that highlights the utter stupidity of th UK government’s costly, useless ‘net zero’ policy measures this one stands out as both crazy AND stupid.
In a move to pay households to make their homes colder by heating outside air. The insanely moronic climate freaks have allocated the odd £15 billio pounds to install heat pumps in UK homes.
But there is a fatal flaw in the plan.
“Since May 2024, Ofgem has removed the requirement for loft or cavity wall insulation to be in place before a homeowner can claim a £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant. BMF CEO John Newcomb argues that the current strategy is fundamentally flawed, stating:
“It seems illogical that a £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant can be claimed without measures to properly insulate homes first.”
For renovators, this policy shift creates a risk of installing advanced tech that the home simply isn’t ready for.
..the current policy as “like running a bath and not putting the plug in.”
“Because heat pumps typically operate at lower flow temperatures than traditional gas boilers, they require a well-insulated environment to function effectively.
“It’s imperative that we don’t lose sight of the need for fabric-first, well-insulated properties,” Beard warns, noting that failing to do so will cause the benefits of energy-efficient measures to “backfire” as heat escapes faster than it can be generated.”
“CEO John Newcomb argues that while the £15 billion allocation is a welcome “long-overdue” investment, the logic of subsidising £7,500 for a heat pump without ensuring the home can hold that heat is “illogical.”
“The Builders Merchant Federation (BMF) say that removing mandatory insulation requirements from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme allows homeowners to install expensive low-carbon heating into “leaky” properties that cannot retain the warmth.
Without adequate insulation, any heat escapes into the outside air – a direct contribution to global warming!?! You can’t fix stupid!
Out of interest, even with adequate insulation, how does the heat escape in hot periods like the summer – do all windows and doors have to be open/!?!
“Without a “fabric first” approach, they warn thousands of homeowners could be left with underperforming systems and unexpectedly high energy bills. Air con required???
While the Government has pledged nearly £15 billion to upgrade five million homes, the BMF has voiced serious concerns regarding a lack of focus on the building’s “fabric.” For renovators, this policy shift creates a risk of installing advanced tech that the home simply isn’t ready for.
Seems that the “focus group” of left-wing radicals has once again won another Darwin award and is not only costing taxpayers £15 billion pounds (from the magic money tree) but is inflicting those COFORMING TO ‘T ZERO’ MADNESS BY installing heat pumps with months of disruption to install the bloody things AND higher electricity bills AND colder homes.
Which makes a mockery of the “Warm Homes Plan:”
What is the Warm Homes Plan and will you benefit from it?
“The Warm Homes Plan is a £15 billion government initiative to help address the issue of energy affordability. The plan will ensure households in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland benefit from energy saving measures that will ultimately make their homes warmer and reduce their energy bills.”
“Ultimately???
“’A warm home shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a basic guarantee for every family in Britain,’ says Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He adds that the plan ‘will help to slash energy costs and lift up to a million people out of fuel poverty.’
Or in the case of labour policy makers, condemn another million homes out of 30 million in the UK, to energy poverty.
“’It is a scandal that millions of people in our country do not have the security of a home that is warm, affordable and safe,’ adds Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. ‘With this investment, we embark on a national project to turn the tide – waging war on fuel poverty and taking another step forward in tackling the affordability crisis for families throughout Britain.’
“Stupid is as stupid does” and Miliband is on enormous pile of stupid, intentionally bankrupting the UK and its people – why he is allowed anywhere near multi-billion pound fiscal matters and taxing of household bills is criminal negligence.
Onwards!
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This article (UK to spend 15 billion pounds directly heating the atmosphere outside homes) was created and published by Peter Halligan and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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