By Paul Homewood
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/sixth-carbon-budget/
I’ve been meaning to take a closer look at the plans for home insulation under the CCC’s Sixth Carbon Budget.
The plan for 2035 baldly states:
But what does this mean for individual householders?
Table B3.2 tells us:
Quite frighteningly, 7.4 million homes are expected to be fitted out with external or internal wall insulation at an average cost of about £8000. Worse still, the CCC admit that this cost does not include the cost of scaffolding or planning, which will easily push the cost over £10,000.
And the energy savings? Between 15% and 18%, roughly £60 a year if you use gas. It does not take a genius to work out that economically it is a waste of money.
Millions more will need to fit cavity and/or loft insulation.
In total, these plans add up to a bill of £80bn, which raises the question of who will pay. Homeowners will be aghast when they find out they are on the hook for this, and government does not have this sort of money to waste, particularly when it will have to shell out billions more to insulate and upgrade its own buildings and offices.
So, will all of this be voluntary? Not if the CCC gets its way!
By 2028, all rented homes will have to meet EPC-C efficiency. Sales of homes which don’t meet this standard will be banned from 2028, mortgages will not be provided by 2033 for any offending homes.
In other words, if you are unlucky enough to own one of the 7 million houses with poor insulation, probably an older building, and you want to sell it, you will first have to fork out 10 grand.
And if you were thinking of buying one, or remortgaging, ditto.
EPC-C is not a very demanding standard anyway. It can typically be achieved with cavity and loft insulation if you already have a condensing boiler. In other words, the energy savings from this Stalinist diktat will be tiny over the country as a whole.
Certainly for anybody fitting an air sourced heat pump, you will to spend much more on insulation than the CCC is suggesting is the case for the majority of homes.
There is one other factor which the CCC has conveniently forgotten – the knock on implications of solid wall insulation.
If it is carried out internally, you lose some of your room space, and you will of course need to redecorate throughout.
External insulation meanwhile totally alters the visual facade of your property, almost certainly for the worst.
And all to save a few tonnes of carbon dioxide!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
December 18, 2020 at 11:36AM
Ironically, the insulation is mainly to keep houses warmer —- but it is required to counter warming!
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