As the Guardian note today:
The millions of gas boilers in the UK's homes produce twice as much climate-heating carbon emissions as all the nation's gas-fired power stations combined, according to an analysis.
The finding highlighted the urgent need for a strong government policy to rapidly introduce low-carbon heating such as heat pumps, the researchers said.
This matters because it says how urgently we need programmes to replace these boilers and to reduce the demand for energy itself - both of which are at the core of the Green New Deal.
It also matters for another reason. These emissions are what are called Scope 3 emissions from the gas companies. They are responsible for them because they are the foreseeable emissions that result from their sale of gas. That's what Scope 3 means - they are the emissions caused by what you sell rather than what you do yourself. They should as a result account for them and the cost of their removal within the supply chain they manage under what I call sustainable cost accounting. If they had to do so then they would be starting to sell heat pumps now. But they're not required to do so, and the accounting standards that are likely to be adopted at COP 26 will not demand that of them, so this problem will continue.
The answer is simple, If only we changed the accounting rules and made the companies selling gas responsible for the emissions resulting from its use they would have to change their behaviour very rapidly. And that is exactly what we need.
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I don’t think you or the Guardian have done your homework.
Heat pumps are not very efficient. Whilst they reduce direct emissions, they require about 4 times the energy to generate the same amount of heat as a modern gas boiler. That energy has got to come from somewhere, so if you force everyone to move to (incredibly expensive) heat pumps, where is the power to run them going to come from?
By the time you factor in the emissions created from building and running all the new power stations needed, you barely get any emissions saving at all for heat pumps – but you do get to increase household bills dramatically.
And don’t you think that if you forced the cost of scope 3 emissions on to the gas suppliers, they won’t simply just pass the cost straight back to the customer?
Truly amateur stuff.
Sources? I note you quote none and I can find nothing to support your claim
Electricity prices are about 4x gas prices per Kw/H. Easy to find prices on the internet.
https://www.evergreenenergy.co.uk/heat-pumps/are-heat-pumps-environmentally-friendly/
For emissions data. Note the “potential” reduction in emissions from switching to a heat pump – with the rather massive caveat that ALL the electricity supplied is from renewables. Which is won’t be, especially when you require a huge increase in electricity supply to run all those new heat pumps you are demanding. Plus backup generation for when the wind isn’t blowing and it’s dark.
If that electricity is not generated from renewables, heat pumps are worse than gas boilers, according to the Energy Saving Trusts own data.
You also haven’t bothered to answer the question as to the obvious problem with your quite crazy SCA plan of charging companies for the emissions they produce. What is going to stop them simply passing the cost directly to the consumers?
It would seem no one here agrees with you
Mike Parr is a specialist in this
I also have a fair amount of experience in the operation of heat pumps – mostly industrial use. The science is just an application of the Carnot cycle.
They are best used in steady state applications where heating (or cooling) is always required, and are most efficient when the ambient temperature is close to the required temp. This is normally described as the coefficient of performance (COP).
Heat pumps are often stated to have COPs of around 2-4, but in practical applications rarely do they actually go above much above 2.
On the face of it, this looks like a win for heat pumps still, but that is before you factor in the generation of the electricity needed to power them. One major benefit of gas boilers is that there is no transmission or generation loss. The most efficient combined cycle gas plants are around 60% efficient. By the time you factor in transmission losses, that number falls under 40%.
So heat pumps would need to always operate at a COP of above 2.5 for them to have any effect in reducing emissions whatsoever. This is around maximum COP for a typical air-source heat pump.
Factor in renewable energy (on average around 25% of the UK energy mix) and if luck, you might get that COP down to just over 2 to have any effect whatsoever on reducing emissions.
That is before you factor in the necessity for any building using a heat pump to be extremely well insulated for it to be anywhere near its rated COP. Apart from the cost, the emissions created producing and installing most types of cavity insulation are large and the gains in thermal efficiency rarely cover the financial and emissions cost of the insulation itself for many buildings.
https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Review-of-potential-for-carbon-savings-from-residential-energy-efficiency-Final-report-A-160114.pdf
The energy saving trust calculated that insulating homes better could save about 7MWh per year. Compared to total energy use in the UK of about 1650TWh per year, this is basically zero. It would literally be more cost efficient to persuade people to turns their lights off when not using them.
About 20% of total final energy use is for heating homes, so renewables are simply not a large scale answer to this problem – unless you are talking nuclear. There are too many issues with variability, grid surge, cost and not to mention the requirement for backup generation.
Heat pumps simply are not a large scale solution to this issue and the suggestion that they could dramatically cut emissions is false. They don’t. Unless you think spending a huge amount of money for very little reduction in emissions is a good plan – but given you know little or nothing about the subject and are just pontificating from your armchair you don’t have to worry about little details such as reality.
I also notice that you still keep failing to answer what should be a very simple question. If you force gas companies to put the cost of emissions on their balance sheets with SCA, don’t you think they will immediately respond by passing the cost straight on to the consumer?
Or didn’t you think that far ahead when you produced SCA?
If you think we are going to survive with only 25% renewable energy you are in cloud cuckoo land
To get to net zero we must have no new coal and gas investment. I mean none. And that will mean dramatic production levels in a decade
You need to get your head around this
You clearly have not, which leaves all else you say in serious doubt
And re cost – the answer is no – they will need new capital
It’s really not rocket science
To reduce carbon emissions we have to insulate our homes better. We have to stop using gas for heating and we have to stop using gas for generating electricity.
Obviously heat pumps should be using renewable electricity to work.
We know the climate emergency is killing people, we know it will kill many more and you are still on the Internet attacking people trying to save lives. Utterly psychopathic.
Heat pumps will, taking a broad average, output 3kWh of heat for every 1kWh of electricity put into them. My business partner and I speak on a regular basis to companies that make both gas boilers & heat pumps.
Generally speaking, for heat pumps to work well in existing homes, thermal rennovation is needed.
The Uk has more than enough potential renewable resource to meet any & all demand from heat pumps.
In the case of gas boilers, it is trivial (circa £150) to make new boilers ready for hydrogen (based on discussions with afore mentioned companies).
The above are realities.
The gas companies in some cases have invested in renewables (off-shore wind) – if the totality of their investments were in renewables, this would speed up the energy transition. Making them responsible for Scope 3 would focus minds.
Thanks
We’ve just had a study done on the best form of low carbon energy for a new affordable housing scheme we are building next year.
We will be using air source heat pumps, along with Passivhaus ait tightness standards in the build, plus solar PV too and generous insulation. You have to have a number of factors at work together for the new tech to deliver the goods.
‘Richard’ (not Murphy) is I think losing the point that it is the cost of electricity that is the problem – NOT the technology. No-one has any control of that at this end. This is something that is not lost on us.
Another key area is training people how to use the new systems – if they treat air source heat pumps like gas boilers, there are in for a nasty surprise.
Underfloor heating is also coming into its own. The wider surface area for heating provided by floor space compared to radiator space actually means that you can turn it down and use less heat (less energy) to stay warm.
Thanks
Seems to me that underfloor heating for new build is almost a must, as you can run it almost continuously at a much lower temperature – say 35 to 45 C – which suits heat pumps much more than the intermittent 60+ you need for radiators. And there is no excuse for not insulating new houses heavily. And then poking holes to permit ventilation. Although I dread to think what happens if it leaks or fails.
The real problem is old housing stock. My current house is a 30s semi, my previous one was an Edwardian terrace, before that another 30s semi, then a flat in a Victorian house, then a flat in an 80s newbuild (some years after it had been thrown together). None of them was insulated sufficiently – mostly single glazed, with drafty old doors, chimneys, etc – and I doubt heat pumps would be much use without substantial expenditure on windows, doors, loft, etc. first. Of course it needs to be done, but it is very much not a one size fits all solution.
On the wider question, we’ve mostly swapped coal for gas, and now we need to swap gas for something better as soon as we can. There is no other choice.
All true
But we really have no choice….and something may need to give way to make it happen
Would not state ownership of all UK energy producing companies with an environmental vision and agenda provide the answer? The surplus would be invested in securing an environmentally friendly industry which helps both commercial and private interests.
I believe this is an ideological issue in the UK which is dominated by neoliberal economic thinking. If this is not the case, Larry Elliot, Keith Starmer and others would have to consider nationalisation as the only answer to this vital issue for us and future generations.
I think there are bigger issues than the ownership of these companies
Could you have got heat pump output the wrong way round?
The burning of 1kWh-equivalent of any fossil fuel can only generate 1kWh of heat, by definition. In contrast, a domestic heat pump system in the UK, by harnessing the use of a compressor, can produce up to four times as much heat energy as is required to run it. In other words, it can convert 1kWh of electrical power into as much as 4 kWh of heat. I can confirm this using my own domestic electricity data for running an air source heat pump in the north of the UK for the last two years.
It is true that heat pumps are less efficient in UK winter temperatures (conversion factor around 2 rather than 4) than during the rest of the year and that good house insulation and draught prevention is an absolute must. I wonder if you have had a bad experience of heat pump use in a poorly insulated or draughty house? That can indeed happen and can be very expensive, but reflects poor insulation rather than a problem with heat pumps.
It’s worth trying again, but get your house well insulated first.
Thanks
I think it is quite important to look at the priorities and what the costs / benefits are of each action. So for example I think concentrating on air travel is a bit of virtue signalling. I think it is around 2% of carbon, and obviously where you can reduce flying by e.g. using the train you should. I have not been anywhere since Covid started but before that I almost always took the train to London for example even if flying was ‘cheaper’. However it isn’t appealing to say foreign travel is out and you can’t see family overseas or go for a holiday. Because of the weight and power issues replacing kerosene is one of the most difficult and expensive things to try to achieve. Building heating, by contrast, is something around 35% of total carbon and it is quite easy, well understood and relatively lower cost to set out to eliminate all of that. We are not currently doing much about it and most new homes are being fitted with gas boilers. I think it would be quite simple to instruct that all new estates must have a district heating system, for example. Likewise in due course electrifying all rail lines should take place, but that is relatively quite costly and time consuming. The DoT is keen on replacing diesel engines with e.g. batteries or hydrogen, but that is not very cost effective and only in development and also has similar problems to replacing kerosene. The carbon saving is also fairly minimal. Putting the same effort / money into getting folk out of the car and onto the train would have far greater impact on carbon. Scotland has free bus travel for the over 60s and is about to extend that to those under 22. How about just ‘free’ public transport across the board? (and nationalise rail / bus – Scotgov has paid out several hundred million to keep the private bus companies going during Covid – surely they could have used that to nationalise the lot of what in April 2020 were essentially all insolvent companies). I heard recently about somebody from Edinburgh attending a family event in Cardiff where two rail tickets were going to be £400 (standard returns). They took the car as it was far less for the fuel plus a hotel stop on out and return legs. You can’t expect people to do the right thing on the carbon front when all the prices direct them to do the opposite. On cars the initial production of the vehicle has a huge carbon impact. I estimated that the carbon cost of building my MG ZT in 2004 was about the same as using 150,000 miles worth of diesel driving it. It has now done 130,000 miles so I still have some way to go before my usage of it has exceeded the carbon impact of building it. So the now very popular Personal Hire contracts by which folk get a new car every 3 years are pretty disastrous on the carbon front. Keeping the equipment running for longer rather than scrapping it prematurely can save a lot more carbon than a modest efficiency gain. I believe the Germans have done a lot of work on the life time impacts / costs of e.g. a paper bag vs a plastic bag. It is quite easy to push for changes that look good, but actually just displace the carbon somewhere else or actually increase it (e.g. closing down steel making in the UK and importing it from China instead).
I don’t claim to be expert but…..
My heat pump claims to be, on average, about 300% efficient… meaning that 1 joule of electricity delivers 3 joules of heat into my house. This drops in winter when the temperature gradient is higher and is better in the summer…. but let’s be conservative and assume 250%.
Gas powered electricity generation claims about 60% efficiency… but lets say, 50% to be conservative.
So 100 joules of gas energy goes to be 50 joules of electric energy which delivers 150 joules of heat to my house.
If I were to burn gas directly I would get about 90 joules of energy?
So, even if all electricity were produced by gas, heat pumps make sense. I know this seems counter-intuitive but a look at my old gas bills versus electricity bills and adjusting for the different price per joule of gas and electricity this seems about right.
So, Richard, (your contributor, not Murphy) what am I missing?
Thanks for summarising what I have read so often
Embodied energy and maintenance costs, perhaps. Professional refrigeration plant was traditionally very reliable and long lived, but heat pumps designed-down for mass production and cheapness, possibly subject to less than ideal operating conditions, maybe not so much. I don’t know if there are reliable figures available.
Maintenance can be a problem. I heard of one pilot scheme for heat recovery ventilation that basically worked well as designed, but had to be scrapped because the basic, necessary maintenance (cleaning and filter replacement) just didn’t happen. One big plus for solar PV; it’s more or less fit and forget, with maybe a new inverter at pretty long intervals.
But that’s an aside. To my mind it makes sense to prioritise the investment where it will work well – in buildings which are suited to it both in physical design ( u/f heating and good insulation) and usage pattern. But from what I see there’s a serious danger that the whole exercise could be discredited by treating heat pumps as a universal panacea and only finding out far too late that some knowledge is needed to use them effectively, and that for some jobs they just dont hack it. It’s worrying how little understanding finds its way into flavour of the month projects – and heat pumps are so FotM at the moment – and how many people go chasing contracts with literally no idea of what their own costs will be, let alone enough basic know-how to understand what might not work.
We are so far from using their potential your warnings are misplaced
@Richard
The potential is only realised if investment goes to projects where it will be [most] effective, not ones that have been hastily cut and pasted together just to comply with directives informed more by the need to be seen to be doing something than by understanding of the technology, its potential, and its limitations. The issues I’ve mentioned are from real instances of which I have personal knowledge.
So here’s the rub. Using ‘the polluter pays principle’ – Am I the polluter with my gas boiler and should I be the one to bear all the cost of paying for my pollution when all I want is a reasonably warm home?
I like the suggestion of Sustainable Cost Accounting (SCC) as it will lay bare for all interested parties just what atmospheric and other pollutants companies are selling AND what they are doing to eliminate the effects of the pollutants. That seems a good way forward and a way in which the public and investors can see just what companies are up to.
There would then be a clamour for funding to replace gas boilers with home insulation, draught exclusion and air source heat pumps (ASHP) at the expense of the polluter, not the homeowner or the state.
Of course there’s a cost to this which will be borne by the consumer in increased electricity prices – that will be an inescapable fact. But to expect me to bear the full cost of insulating and draught proofing my home and installing the ASHP needs to be addressed by a detailed examination of the relationship between old housing stock, state funding and the polluter pays principle as well as looking at the huge rise in the capital value (above reasonable inflation) of much of the UK’s housing stock.
Maybe we need:
1. Sustainable cost accounting on which to base sensible taxation of the polluter
2. A tax on the unearned income implicit in the rise in the value of housing on the eventual sale of the house – a house CGT
3. A zero interest government loan using the future income from 2 to enable the householder to insulate, draught-proof and install the ASHP installation NOW. (We are in a climate emergency after all). The loan to be paid back to the state on sale of the house, or in second death.
I’ve been in my old, draughty 1876 Victorian house for 40 years and during that time inflation has averaged about 3.5% pa while my house has inflated by almost 7.0% pa
We have so far spent about £20k on double glazing, draught-proofing & insulation. The ASHP fully costed quotation is another £22k. BUT without a full retrofit of wall insulation the house will still be well below the desired standard for a future family home.
Should we move and leave the problem to someone else while we buy an energy efficient house elsewhere and pocket our unearned income and find legal ways to leave it to our children?
Should all the energy efficiency problems of this house be solved by us, the state, the polluter, or the next occupants who can afford the greatly inflated prices of ‘desirable’ Victorian properties?
Meanwhile Richard – continue the good work – give us good analyses – get us thinking…..
You pose the sorts of question many are asking – me included
@Tim Rideout
In neoliberal Britain district heating schemes are okay in theory but need very strict control – otherwise the monopoly supplier can just increase prices at will. Not only do you have nowhere else to get your hot water from (unless you are able to install your own separate system – which is not the idea!) you probably won’t be able to sell your house anyway.
@Peter May
Homeowners – home heaters, who pay for whatever has been installed – are prey to whatever supplier of what ever consumer good they wish to purchase and thus purchasing District Heat will likely be similar to most of the rest of their budget. Democratic participation in one’s local DH system might be a partial answer and could be achieved by Regulation which might be overseen on a national or a regional basis.
I’m confused about Scope 3. Does Russian gas count against Russia, the domestic supplier, the household, or all three?
Where it is burned
And each supplier has a responsibility to eliminate it
But the supplier is surely Gasprom? So they have to account for all emissions? How could that possibly happen?
They have intermediate sellers here
They are responsible for their Scope 3
Everyone is all through the chain
They can all decide to change it
With regard to your idea the intermediate sellers of Russian gas would disappear on a heartbeat and Gasprom would have to develop their own direct distribution.. do the onus will be on Gasprom to account for all emissions.., Gasprom won’t but even if they did they would go bust and we then have no natural gas supplied to us!!! What happens then.,
I really do think you are deliberately missing the point
If Gasprom wants to sell here someone is going to have to do so, here, and they will have the Scipe 3 responsibility
But since I think you are simply here to troll I would not bother replying
@PSR
Just a couple of points which I’m sure you’re aware of but many are not:
– I have a fully refurbished 1980’s bungalow with full UFH, Solar PV, double glazing, new insulation etc. including 450ml of insulation under the UFH pipes & screed.
– I’d fully agree with your point on use of the technologies as UFH works completely differently to radiators (runs at 40c, long time to heat up, longer time to cool down) and the use of solar PV means when the sun shines we can run hot water & tumble dryer for free. Most of this is counter intuitive.
– One downside in all this is that in a bungalow the air has nowhere to escape to (eg upstairs) and the house is subject to condensation. To cure this we use a PIV fan which brings in cool are & forces the humid air out – works well.
Thanks
Graham
You are right – one of the items I missed off my hasty list was some form of ventilation – mechanical or electric – we’ve gone for mechanical (to keep running costs low) and it works in the floor heated, air pump driven bungalows we’ve just built.
The thing is you’ve just got to decide to do it and make it happen.
The same I believe with MMT and a courageous state.
Last month I had my ancient gas boiler replaced with a state of the art heat pump system. It is currently heating my house and heated my hot water in the small hours.
I have no data on how much I might be saving but the planet is being saved by this move. Scotgov recommends that we do this. I get roughly 70% of the capital cost back in quarterly payments over 10 years.
I intend to squirrel this away to help pay for a replacement when the system wears out. Though with regular maintenance it could last 20 years.
The heat pumps fill a hot water tank and heat my radiators. My system was quite expensive since we had microbore piping going in one side of the radiators. So we had to be repiped with radiators converted to flow through. I got TRV’s out of it though which means I get to keep the bedrooms slightly cooler to aid sleep. It just works.
I live in Edinburgh in a 1900 typically tenement. I have had double glazing installed Jan last year, and a gas boiler under 2 years old replacing one that was around 20 years old. I only have 2 outside walls – one is mostly a big bay window, but the other wall is wider and mostly stone.
As I am on the 2nd floor of 3, I have limited options for further insulation. Really only internal, and then only on one of the outside walls, as there is nothing much in terms of wall compared to window on the first wall.
Even then, I don’t think a heat pump is an option for me – I would have no rights to bury pipes in the shared green, I have no rights to put solar panels on the roof. I could possibly look at an air source heat pump, but I am not sure I would be allowed to mount one outside on my wall.
What I am considering is keeping my gas central heating low, and then using a standalone portable IR panel heater for localised heat.
Given these flats were built before gas central heating, they still have their chimneys and flues, so another option is a DEFRA approved wood stove in the main room, and keep the other rooms unheated (as they mostly would have been in the past).
I have worn wooly hats and gloves indoors before!
You are right – heat pumps are not the answer to all situations
My heat pumps draw heat from the air not the ground. You can have one attached to your outside wall as you will see in many parts of the world. Mine is made in Korea as they use them an awful lot. You will see them attached to every appartment in blocks.
So there is no reason why you cannot have one. My initial consult with the company cost me nothing.
The other issue will be forcing landlords to meet new requirements as tenants, who are an increasing percentage of the population, will be unable to initiate any changes on their dwellings.
I understand there are Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) for private rented accommodation already.
I don’t know how well it is enforced (more in the breach than the observance, I expect, and there are exceptions) but the Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015 requires a minimum energy efficiency standard of EPC E for the private rented sector in England and Wales, so a landlord who rents property in EPC F or G could be fined.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/962/made
A little like the efficiency standards for domestic appliances (the rainbow labels) this could be ratcheted up over time so we end up with mostly ABCs not EFGs.
I think in the end innovation will sort this out. I looked at ground source heat pumps on a new build a few years ago but the numbers were eye watering so put in a gas boiler. Just as cars will go electric ( when it makes sense and is affordable ) , heating will go green ( when it makes sense and is affordable ). I assume clever types are working on this so it will all come if we wait and stop stressing about it.
On his blog. Surplus Energy Economics Tim Morgan made an interesting point that we have no real idea of what an economy powered by renewable energy will profile look like
That will inturn determine what we have in terms of heat transport act
And I suspect that it won’t be much like what we are talking about now
@John Boxall
Look North, Scotland now produces an excess of renewable energy. We have at least two hydro power stations with pumped storage fitted originally. Others are being retrofitted with pump storage. This enables Hydro systems to act like giant storage batteries for when the sun shines, the tide moves and the wind blows but power needs are low.
Hyrdo stations are also close to being instant on backups. As long as it takes water to fall and begin turning the turbines. Have you ever been in a turbine hall? I’ve been in several man and boy. We toured the hole in the mountain station emptying into the north of Loch Awe when I was 5. That is one of those with pumped storage built in.