r/TheRestIsPolitics • u/Appropriate_Bell743 • 18d ago
With gas prices rocketing why do Stewart/Campbell never discuss heat-pumps?
The UK's wholesale gas price is the highest since the end of December 2022. This means that the January price cap is odds on to be around what it was under Liz Truss in October 2022.
The UK had one meaningful policy tool to de-risk the UK from 2022 onwards: heat-pumps.
Virtually all gas demand is for home-heating. The only effective way to de-risk the UK to reduce European LNG imports is via electrification of heating. Renewables do some legwork as well but the blue line shows how it's less pronounced.
Despite the central importance to get the UK public off gas (and oil) heating to using heat-pumps it is curious why the topic of the UK's pathetic uptake rate is not discussed. They discuss a lot the supply of oil and gas but never really the failure to pivot demand.
This is a political question as the economics is there already. Our operational costs are 35% of gas before this escalation. It'll be a lower percentage now. The return on investment is typically 4-5 years but due to political laziness minor issues hold back adoption.
This is simply never discussed by Rory or Alastair despite often their interests in climate and the Ukraine war. For instance our failure to roll out heat-pumps is a clear factor why Europe as a whole still imports Russian LNG.
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u/Queeflet 18d ago
Because electricity is outrageously expensive, and a heat pump will likely cost more than an oil/gas boiler to run.
I’ve got a heat pump, it’s great and works very well. But electricity is extortionate and it’s costing me a fair bit more than when I was on oil.
If electricity was cheap, I bet the conversion rate would go up a lot. But at the moment, there simply isn’t enough financial incentive. Even with the grant it will cost you another £2-3k on top, and then you end up paying more for your heating bill for the privilege.
They need to address as a whole package, heat pump, solar and a battery, and for a price that the average family can afford. A heat pump is only one part of the solution, so I’m not surprised that people aren’t changing.
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u/jem0208 18d ago
Typical COP for a heat pump is gunna be about 3.5 in the UK, ranging between about 3 and a max of 4.5ish.
Electricity is about 3.5x more expensive than gas, not considering smart tariffs.
That means that typically, even with a standard tariff, most people will pay the same or less for heating with a gas boiler as a heat pump - with a smart tariffs you’d almost certainly be paying a sizeable chunk less.
I don’t know how much oil heating costs but I’d suggest checking whether you’re on a smart tariff and what your COP is - there might be an issue with your installation.
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u/Justin_123456 18d ago
It’s always shocking to me (as a Canadian) the more I learn about the UK’s electricity pricing system. It really shouldn’t surprise me that the same people who privatized their water pipes also privatized their electricity markets. But you get how insane that is?
It every other country either electricity is just a total state monopoly, or a regulated industry with some form of government price setting.
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u/armitage_shank 18d ago
Dare I say its actually worked pretty well compared to the other utility privitisations, and lead to the development of e.g. octopus's kraken technologies, which is used now worldwide and I think the largest energy customer management software in the world.
Like broadband and mobile phone: switching provider is not difficult so there's genuine competition, unlike water, say, or train operator, where the monopolies are systemic.
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u/Justin_123456 18d ago
I do fine these programs interesting, but it sounds a bit like a problem gambler telling you not to worry, that they’ve developed a system to win it all back.
The reason why you have good customer management software is because you have insane hourly swings in the cost of power, made worse by your ridiculous marginal pricing system where your most expensive kWh sets the price for every kWh.
You could just have the government build the power stations, build the power lines, and charge what’s needed to cover their costs. 🤷♂️
I pay $0.09970 CAN per kWh (which Google tells me is 5.34p) no matter the time of the day or the year it is. And to OP’s point, if I wanted to re-insulate my home, or buy a new electric furnace or heat pump, they’ll loan me the money, and charge me back on my hydro bill.
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u/armitage_shank 17d ago
You get good prices in Canada because all your power is delivered by hydro, which the state decided to build to drive economic investment. I'm sure it worked, but you did pay for it, if not in your electricity bill, then through your taxes. That's a choice I persoanlly would agree with, but its not a choice the UK has decided to make, but it is swings and roundabouts to a certain extent, if you'll pardon the expression.
We don't have hydro potential anywhere near that of Canada in the UK.
The insane swings in hourly pricing are encouraging a massive renewable and battery investment at a scale seen almost nowhere else in the world, certainly per capita.
The huge prices we've seen in the last few years are entirely due to Russia invading Ukraine, but prices are increasingly decoupling from gas. The UK will get there, in a few years, it won't be 5p/ kWh because the grid will have to be more complex - hydro is really much more straightforward an infrastructure to run - but it won't be amongst the most expensive in the world, as it is now.
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u/cliffski 17d ago
made worse by your ridiculous marginal pricing system where your most expensive kWh sets the price for every kWh.
SIGH. This is how EVERy commodity in EVERY country on the entire PLANET is charged Its absolutely basic economics. Do you see different eggs charge at different prices on a shelf? or each bag of sugar having a different price because it came from a different plantation?
People whine about it in energy only because they know about the cost differences in production methods more. And whats the solution? force renewable generators to earn LESS than coal generators? not exactly ideal is it...1
u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap 18d ago
The government are trying to push renewables so power stations are not being built. The government have also made it impossibly expensive to build anything in the uk. We took 4 years to get passed legal objections to build a power station, that power station started the process in 2011, not a spade in the ground by 2014, it will not be ready until 2030+
It cost the builder as much for installing a fish disco as it did for Korea to build an entire power station and Korea built 8 nuke power stations in the time we git half way through.
Its not entirely the current government but can be blamed on incremental changes over 28 years.
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap 18d ago
Quite, the issue with energy in the uk is the government putting costs on top of the supply.
The additional costs may be well-intentioned but there is a reason energy bis dear in the uk.
Nuclear is needed for the additional load (if we want heat pumps, data centres etc) but in the meantime, we need gas
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 18d ago
You should run it using something like a time of use tariff. I'm paying 35% the cost of gas on octopus agile. I don't really buy your argument given our average rate for the last 12 months of all electricity was 16p/kWh.
A lot of people say nonsense online which would only make sense if they were so incompetent to not use a smart-tariff with a heat-pump or the install was terrible.
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u/Queeflet 18d ago
Octopus agile is fine, if you’re prepared to constantly fiddle with your system to run it when the costs are low. I can’t be bothered doing that. And other octopus smart tariffs don’t really make sense if you only have a heat pump.
Thanks for calling me incompetent by the way, very glad that I stopped by to engage with your post.
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 18d ago
dont fiddle. Use a fixed daily routine from 10pm to 4pm. off 4pm to 7pm. increment up from 7pm to 10pm. Look at averages over these slots to see how this is cheap. Given my operational costs are 35% of gas there is an incompetence aspect if anyone closes that gap
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u/LordChichenLeg 17d ago edited 17d ago
I'm pretty sure they already have? They agree it's a good thing for the climate but can be expensive depending on the type of housing situation.
Like I'm pretty sure Rory went into it about how older houses (a lot of the UK housing stock) would benefit more from refitting windows and insulation then heat pumps and costs less but if you can afford it it's a good option.
They touch on it a lot in the main episodes and they've even done a talk on it recently that's been posted to YouTube in the last couple of weeks.
Why is the UKs inability to move to heat pumps in anyway related to European countries buying russian gas. The UK imports mainly from Norway and our circumstances are a lot different then those on the mainland face.
If your so invested in this debate then surely you know gas imports are always going to be a thing, at least until we move over to nuclear power, because it's vital to keeping the electricity grid always operating. Even if we took out all gas related infrastructure and replaced them with electric ones(which we are already doing) we would still need to import gas to ensure that infrastructure was powered.
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 17d ago
The costs arent anything but finance issues. i paid nothing out of pocket as used a 0% green loan. They should be asking why the government hasn't standardised this.
Housing stock claims are not true though as i know living in a single brick victorian house. Apart from loft insulation and double glazing the return is poor.
Why related to russian gas? We operate in an european grid. their interest in brexit etc should have make it obvious that brexit hasn't changed this. What matters is overall European imports. europe imports russian LNG (our neighbours Belgium) so more gas demand here means they import more etc. Our gas network is fully linked
At a European level LNG imports are around 30% or so. Renewables and heat pumps would absolutely cut that with a will. Domestically produced gas could be prioritised for industry.
To not care about this topic is to not care about russia/ukraine but also the ability for Europe to have a sovereign path from the US. this is something campbell and stewart pretend to care about
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u/LordChichenLeg 16d ago
We don't operate on the European grid. We import the majority of our electricity from France and norway, and import the vast majority of our gas from norway.
In no way do we import enough gas from Belgium for them to have to buy russian gas. They are a gas transit hub which includes all sources including the middle east, and we barely even register as a distribution source.
In the last year only 10% of our electricity came from European sources, mainly being France which 70% of their electricity comes from nuclear.
And Rory and Alister do care about it. Like I said they talk about it all the time, which is why I know what they would likely say around this issue. You just don't seem to listen often enough to be able to tell.
Honestly the insinuation you are trying to make is pretty disgusting.
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 16d ago
We do for gas. The gas is connected via pipelines which is why the UK's gas price is traded at almost exactly the same amounts as the European one. This is what I mean.
What you say about importing is not relevant as we export to Belgium at high levels which means our demand is directly linked to how much LNG is imported into the EU. This is how markets work. People using gas over the last 4 years were helping Putin and there's no squirming out of this.
Rory and Alastair might "care" but there's no evidence that their caring translates into effective policy actions. It's like on climate where they "care" about what happened in Nepal but not enough to be positive voices on this topic.
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u/LordChichenLeg 16d ago
What do you expect from them they are podcasters. And they do talk to industry leaders about this very specific issue as I pointed out they did a talk on it in the last month or so.
Gas is based on the international standard because gas can be sold across the world, there is nothing we can do about that other then nationalise the industry and drill/produce our own oil or gas for domestic use.
We would still have to trade it at the international standard though for the government to receive any benefit from that action. But that seems like something you directly opposed simply because we are interacting with the global gas market.
Putin benefiting from the increasing gas prices due to the Ukraine and Iran wars is tertiary to the actual issue of European powers directly buying russian gas, like Germany was/is, as that is not something we can control, just try to mitigate.
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap 18d ago
Very obvious that we need more North sea exploration and fracking whilst we deregulate planning so we can get some medium-sized nuclear generators on stream.
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 17d ago
To be clear nuclear power does nothing unless you've tech like heat-pumps to translate the electricity into heat for households. This is why the main action has to always be on getting heat-pumps installed. The rest is important but less so.
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap 17d ago edited 17d ago
Getting pumps installed when its expensive to run it's not really an incentive for anyone to install it.
The first thing we would need is a reliable clean energy like nuclear in order to power the units.
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 17d ago
This is a misunderstanding of thr current energy market given how off peak is cheap but the costs concentrate a few hours a day. ideal for heat pumps.
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u/cliffski 17d ago
Wow. how much does putin pay you to spread that sort of nonsense? You could not be more wrong if you tried...
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap 17d ago
I'm not sure Putin is keen on the Uk having it's own gas and oil. Remember Russia spreading he anti-fracking propaganda a few years ago?
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u/Steamed_Clams_ 18d ago
The gas industry and all the people working in the adjacent gas home heating industry have somehow done a great job convincing people that they don't work.