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A cold time in the old house tonight

20 Jan 2021 | News Roundup

Is the pandemic getting you down? And your bank account? Well, no worries. At least not in the homes of the likes of Justin Trudeau and Boris Johnson, who think it’s a fine time to increase the cost of frivolous luxuries like heating the house you’re increasingly forbidden to leave. After all, with global warming you won’t need that silly old furnace anyway. Or be allowed to use it.

To be fair to Johnson, it won’t much matter whether you can afford natural gas since it will be illegal to heat with it anyway, in new homes as of 2023 and in older ones as of 2035. Though who will be able to afford a new home with the one-two punch of lockdowns and the local Green New Deal is difficult to say. Or even afford an existing one complete with refit.

Since you ask, yes, gas is a significant source of home heat in Britain. Though as Ben Pile notes in Spiked about Johnson’s plans, only in about 84% of them. And if homeowners somehow finance and arrange the retrofit to electricity, well, that kind of power costs more than 4 times as much per kWh in the UK thanks to other brilliantly foresighted energy policies.

Once again, relief is in sight. The price of electricity won’t matter as much as it seems to because, as with electric cars, Britain doesn’t have the generating capacity to power all those new electric furnaces or baseboard heaters. Even though Pile also makes the awkward observation that a quarter of Britain’s electricity comes from… um… natural-gas-fired generating stations. Will those still be allowed?

Of course the big brains behind such policies probably think it will be so much hotter by 2024 that furnaces will like snow be a thing of the past. Having attached so many unimaginably hideous consequences to an average temperature 1.5C above the Little Ice Age they seem to have convinced themselves it’s actually a huge deal.

Of course Johnson has a plan to fix all these issues if, under that rubric, you include any document with the word “plan” on the cover and a set of points about what the authors wish would happen. Along with puffery about “a Green Industrial Revolution” from a former libertarian who now apparently thinks Adam Smith was a Gosplan apparatchik or some such.

No really. The plan says “Two centuries ago the UK led the world’s first Industrial Revolution. Powered by innovation and private investment, this transformation gave birth to many of our great cities and effectively created the modern world. Today we will mobilise the same forces to level up our country and enable our proud industrial heartlands to forge the future once again.” Except this time it’s not private investment, it’s government fiat. Which some nitpickers feel is not actually quite the same.

Regrettably Pile documents the improbability of any of it actually happening. Like gigawatt upon gigawatt of hydrogen-powered electricity by 2030. And where does the hydrogen come from? Basically from electrocuting water or steaming natural gas, which doesn’t just waste power but requires carbon capture of its byproducts. Hey. This game is hard.

At least the plan does include nuclear power as Point 3. But “Jet Zero and Green Ships” sounds like a cartoon not something on which to gamble the prosperity of a G7 country and the ability of its citizens to live through the snowy winters that continue to defy predictions and hit the UK. As for wind (Point 1, repackaged as “Advancing Offshore Wind” which sounds like a weather report), been there, done that, got the bill.

The most probable outcome here is that none of the lovely pie-in-the-sky will happen. Not even the GHG reductions. But heating bills will rise and so will deaths from cold. Though not by wealthy politicians.

3 comments on “A cold time in the old house tonight”

  1. I feel that I'm living in an a mental asylum that's been taken over by the inmates. I can reverently say God help us and save us from these Green maniacs!

  2. It is the total lack of joined up thinking that is of real concern, plans are not deeds, you have a wish list, you look at that list and say- to do this I need the following to be in place or to be proven technology that will come on line in time to allow what I plan to happen, you do not pass legislation that will fail if the technology is not available, but due to legally binding commitments you have to make do with the next best thing, regardless of cost, we have a power production gap, we have a technology gap in the production of cost effective alternative home heating systems, the banning of fossil fuel vehicles will create a further strain on this PPG, we have no idea if wind, solar and “bio fuels” (in brackets because they are not carbon negligible) will provide the 24/7 availability that a modern G7 nation requires, only fossil fuels or nuclear power can do this, in short- a decision made to fulfill the wishes of a minority but vocal section has condemned 87% ot the nation to a combination of critical fuel poverty where choices made will cost lives as people will not be able to afford to heat their homes sufficiently, coupled with power outages as demand exceeds available supply, creating employment issues. However, the vocal minority can bask in the glory of their achievement- a green and peasant land, broken but with zero emissions.

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