I see no evidence that subsidising UK renewables would cause more to be built. There's no shortage of investors.
Build out is constrained by shortage of sites, vessels and grid connections.
If you click the speech bubble 👇 you can reply in line, don't keep starting new threads.
False dichotomy.
Renewables investment in UK is overwhelmingly by large private companies: SSE, Orsted, Equinor, RWE using shareholder or bond funding.
Heatpumps are funded by homeowners, with gov grant if eligible.
Not either-or, and doing more of one doesn't mean doing less of the other.
And if we add a HP in the UK then two-thirds of its electricity is non-fossil ofc.
We notice how he chose the reference frame to include the gas power station and exclude the counterfactual gas boiler, but perhaps he hoped we wouldn't notice that.
Roughly speaking, burning one extra kg more gas in a power station to supply a heatpump, saves 1.5 kg of gas being burned in a gas boiler, or three kg of gas being burned for a fan heater.
The OP's opening statement about 'extra gas' is just wrong!
If adding heatpumps or EVs caused more fossils to be burned than the counterfactual gas boilers and petrol cars, then UK emissions would be increasing.
But they're not.
Some people try to skip over explaining their counterfactual!
The marginal intensity argument was used a lot around 2015 by bad faith anti-EV people, but it's a logical fallacy.
It's like electricity companies who 'only sell 100% green electricity'.
In reality everyone gets the same electricity and it's all equally green, or not.
That's true of any/all loads though: HPs, EVs, lights, cookers, toasters, data centres, steelworks, jacuzzis.
They can't all be the gas-powered marginal load though, there's not enough gas to power every load.
Why would we decide the HPs are gas- powered and the other loads are not?
Yes there's opportunities for a skilled tradesperson who works less inefficiently than their competitors.
They end up running a firm employing 10 people turning over £2m
That skilled tradesperson doesn't get any business or personnel mgmt training though, got to be naturally good at that too!
Plumber came to my job, brought assistant, but only had 1 set of tools so they took turns working. Same pipe components and tools as 50 years ago, don't trust the new stuff.
One took the van off to the merchants to get a bit (that could have been planned if he had IT), other was left stranded.
Anecdote (from me) but the many sole traders in the building/maintenance industry seem unable to invest in productivity:
Absolutely.
the building industry seems to actively exclude half of its potential workforce, this has persisted through many previous rounds of labour shortage.
Manumatic then! Eco mode in summer, sweet spot in winter, normal mode in Beasts from Easts.
Perhaps Homely could do that?
Is it possible to tweak the compressor speed remotely, by sending in new values of noise reduction?
Eg have some software that looks at the needs for space heating, then decides how long/slow of a HW cycle is acceptable?
Space heating ok => set slow HW rps
space heating struggling => set fast HW
Was wondering "what is sweet spot mode"?
And of course there's a detailed article!
Using the noise reduction feature to force the compressor to run at its most efficient speed 80 Hz
From the Civil Engineers
"rebalancing capital investment towards [repairs]"
"deterioration of ageing infrastructure
accelerating decline of transport assets nationwide – particularly local roads – is raising serious safety concerns £50bn
Water industry leaks
School buildings
Hospitals"
Yeah your floor is cool enough for you to stand on without burning your feet
That means it has to be less than 30degC
Ideal for a heatpump
Oil boilers work at 70degC so need special recirculating manifolds to reduce the water temperature enough to work for floor heating.
We were living in rural Aberdeenshire in the winter of 2008 and the oil delivery trucks couldn't get out through the snow, we ran out.
Got a heatpump fitted early in 2009 !
It's been many, many years since heating oil was 40p! Takes me back...
Boilerjuice price was 60p for last few years and £1.50 today.
Oil boiler is 80% efficient, 20% of heat goes out the flue pipe.
Heatpump is 350% efficient as it gathers lots more free heat from the air than the electric it uses
'Lowest possible bills' perhaps?
Zero Bills was nice title for a TV show, but generally people have repayment bills to pay on the upfront costs of whatever they installed, whether that's insulation or PV, and whether financed by borrowing/mortgage or by diverting pension pot!
So don't think there's a zero bill unfortunately.
A teaser here for Version 6.0!
That presumes that other renewables and nuclear will be built, IE that further capital will be spent.
Need to include that future capital in the £/CO2 reckoning, if we are presuming future CO2 intensity will be less?
EG the increasing benefit of HP over time only happens if/when we spend on wind?
Whereas non-state-owned oil companies are packing up and winding down their UK North sea operations.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
I might have to re think
Equinor set this against their existing UK projects that are in late production phase, so (some of) the various allowances for Rosebank capital can be set immediately against current revenue from their other fields, this derisks the project for them.
the UK taxpayer pays most of the cost.
Equinor is the state owned Norwegian government oil company, they access very cheap capital and can take large risk.
There is substantial risk that the project will be cancelled so the revenue phase won't happen.
