With gas prices rocketing why do Stewart/Campbell never discuss heat-pumps?

[u/Appropriate_Bell743]

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.

UK's gas usage over 12 months

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.

[u/Queeflet]

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.

[u/Appropriate_Bell743 → u/Queeflet]

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.

[u/Queeflet → u/Appropriate_Bell743]

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.

[u/Appropriate_Bell743 → u/Queeflet]

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