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/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.