notes

Probably the biggest announcement from the government in the run up to the autumn budget and CPO26 was that from April next year they will give people in England and Wales £5000 towards the cost of installing heat pumps. At least until the money runs out - £450 million has been allocated so that would be 90,000 homes out of the 25 million homes estimated to have gas boilers. Unfortunately they forgot to mention (and hardly anyone in the media seemed aware, when they were passing the news on) that the current Renewable Heat Incentive scheme will close in March. I went to the government's Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) calculator and checked what is currently on offer, anywhere in the UK, for a heat pump in a typical home - a well-insulated three-bedroom 1980s semi with gas central heating. The RHI payments for an air-source heat pump would be £5320 or, for a ground-source heat pump, £11,200, payable in quarterly installments over seven years. That's right, that'...

So gas heating will be phased out. No gas boilers in new homes from 2025 and you will not be able to replace your gas boiler from 2035. Two options are being talked about as greener alternatives: heat pumps, running on clean electricity, and boilers adapted to burn green hydrogen. To clarify: by clean electricity I mean electricity from wind or solar farms or from nuclear power (not very clean, since you have some very difficult waste to deal with, but at least there's no CO2 being produced); green hydrogen is made from water by electrolysis (or possibly from bio-waste, trapping the carbon) - NOT so-called grey hydrogen which is made from fossil fuels and produces CO2 or even blue hydrogen (same but the CO2 is captured). electrolysis The idea of simply switching our gas boilers over to hydrogen is an attractive one, especially if (i) you already have a boiler (and most of us do) and they've told you it will just need a couple of replacement parts, whereas heat ...