By Paul Homewood
Don’t say I did not warn you!
Homeowners could be forced to replace their gas boilers to ensure the UK meets its target to be carbon neutral by 2050, ministers are warning.
The Government will publish a White Paper later this year which will set out the "bigger decisions" that the UK has to make to meet the target.
Lord Duncan of Springbank, the Climate Change minister, said that the White Paper will consider whether the Government should ban gas central heating altogether from all homes.
It is not clear if homeowners will have to pay for this new strategy – which is planned to be introduced incrementally over the next decade – and whether there are enough plumbers to carry out the work.
It comes after Ofgem, the gas regulator, said last week that Britain will have to change "the way homes and businesses are heated" to ensure the UK can hit its target.
The Government will set out the radical plans in the months leading up to the COP 26 environmental summit in Glasgow later this year.
Last June the UK became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050.
Lord Duncan said that to hit this target the Government was now looking at a new "domestic decarbonisation approach" to hit the target.
He said "There will be an overarching energy White Paper that will look at the bigger decisions that we have to take. Decarbonising domestic heating will be a real challenge. Shall we electrify the entire grid?
"If we do so, bearing in mind that electricity tends to be more expensive, we need to address fuel poverty head on if that is the case. Or are we looking at putting hydrogen into the grid in a hybrid or pure form?
"We will resolve that question this year. We will make a decision to determine that and to support the way forward."
He added: "We will need to do so in tandem with fuel poverty; again, there is no point in decarbonising while making people cold and sick. We need to make sure we go hand-in-hand with that just transition for all the people.
What I find most astonishing about this report is its total failure to mention how much all of this might cost. There is no excuse for this, given that the Committee on Climate Change have already provided an estimate of £28bn a year.
Like all official estimates, that is likely to be an underestimate of the eventual cost, and itself is netted off against speculative energy savings.
What is also significant is this statement:
It is not clear if homeowners will have to pay for this new strategy – which is planned to be introduced incrementally over the next decade
No longer is this something which might happen in decades time. Just like the bringing forward of the ban on petrol cars, the new heating strategy will affect us much sooner than we thought.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
February 9, 2020 at 04:42AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 