Even if we had the money say £30Bn we could not spend it, certainly not this century and definitely not by 2030, 2045 or 2050. I recon that we couldn’t even retrofit the existing stock within a hundred years, by which time we would have had to start again at square one.

I think that the overall quality of our housing stock has improved over the last 100 years but the quality is still too low especially in terms of sustainability, durability, longevity, energy demand etc. Delivering retrofit at scale simply isn’t possible, insufficient infrastructure, operatives and managers. Even if every vaguely suitable unemployed person was retrained, grants were thrown at the problem we still would need 50 or 75 years to get it done. 😢

Do we need a new approach? I don’t have an answer and there may well not be one!

As a first thing I would say fix the quality problems with new build (and perhaps raise the energy standard of new build) so that we are not building problems for the future.

Over here I have just seen an announcement of a 100% non returnable EU grant for domestic houses of almost 30,000 GBP to install solar PV (max 5kWp), heat pump, (max 9kW), electric storage (=battery) and up to standard windows and doors. All items have to be done except windows and doors if they are already up to standard. The grant is restricted by the gross taxable income of all members of the household, but the cut-off level means that a family on mid-range salary(ies) will be eligible.

It is an EU grant so you lot over there won't get a sniff - but will Boris do something similar to get fossil fuel usage down?

Tony - does this count as a new approach?

From the noises made by the government so far it seems that they think it can be business as usual with added bling: we don't have to use our cars less as long as we drive electric, we don't have to insulate our homes as long as we have a heat pump etc.
It just means we will emit less CO2 while being equally miserable in our cold draughty homes, or sitting in a motorway queue. I'm afraid the fabric first approach will become the niche, luxury option without the appeal that a niche, luxury car has to many people. Until they experience living in a high quality retrofit, of course.

Posted By: tony... but the money comes from somewhere and has to be paid back.

There is an understanding growing, even amongst politicians, but is so far suicide for politicians to express, that wot Tony said there, is an old myth. It's called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=The+deficit+myth&ref=nb_sb_noss .

Governments that are in control of their own currency - US, UK, Japan etc, and EU but not individual EU countries - can simply print as much money as is needed - not necessarily raise it from taxation, and not need to borrow/incur debt with the private sector. Only such governments are able to do that - local governments and private sector can't. And they frequently do, always have, especially for e.g. military spending - but then revert to 'how's it going to be paid for' restraint when it comes to social spending.

Printing money has a tendency to create inflation, and in the past diastrously so - but not necessarily. When the money printed simply increases demand and spending in an economy that has unused actual (or genuine potential) productive capacity, it's not inflationary but simply releases that potential, for society's benefit. If it's judged that there's too much money out there relative to actual or potential productive capacity, then taxation can suck it back out of circulation. But taxation is not needed to fund government spending.

If you watch politicians' public spending plans, you can detect the new undercover awareness that this is possible - just can't call it that yet. Teresa May was wrong - Corbyn's Magic Money Tree does exist, and the Tories harvested it massively to finance furlough etc - tho they needn't have handed the private sector massive future interest repayments in the process.

US defence budgets have always had bottomless finance, no questions asked. But Obama's flagship Stimulus package was so watered down that it failed, because he still bought into the deficit myth.

Not so Biden - his Reconciliation package is as free-spending as any defence budget, and most Democrats are desperate to get it passed as such. When that succeeds, US, coming from behind, can race ahead with every kind of social/infrasrtucture project, including insulating the housing stock, leaving behind the traditionalist-dominated countries like Sunak's UK.

That's good comment Will - need to digest it line by line. Your last two paras I can immediately approve - it's not simply 'printing money' - once the possibility is allowed in principle, then a whole new realm of governance skill is necessary to ensure that the money is printed at a well-judged rate (to avoid extra spending power exceeding the economy's capacity to expand to satisfy the demand) and is paid into well-chosen pockets under well-crafted rules (to keep it in circulation in the 'real economy, not too quickly siphoned into stock market inflation, from where it can never return back into circulable cash).

That last danger, hard to resist, is what gives me doubt about your second para - "the value of all the assets in the economy", which AFAIK is dominated two to one by FTSE value, which according to Piketty inherently increases faster than the everyday value of the 'real' economy, in other words is continually draining the product of real work (as distinct from financial speculation work) into a black hole where it only serves to bid up tokens of ownership and control, which cannot be returned to cash for real productive use.

And, as you say, pensions which exploit this above-inflation stock market growth - reliance on which is a round-about and crippling way for the 'real' economy to support its retired workforce - a horrible privatisation of Lloyd George's (with Winston Churchill?) National Insurance (2011).

I might agree if you said ... "if economic growth increases the value of the 'real' economy of work and production (excluding the stock valuation of companies) by say 2% ..."

Only the diligent do DraughtProofing most don’t care and pay the additional bill or are cold

I can't help but think the problems are encapsulated by the report on the cost of replacement heating systems I linked to in my fan convector thread yesterday. If, for example, a retrofit heat pump costs £15k, especially vs a replacement combi boiler at £2.5k, it's just not going to happen en masse, especially given the disruption involved.

But I believe that with further innovation on the cost and installation side it must be possibile to halve the cost and halve whatever the installaton time is, and suddenly that feels doable, especially if the costs are amortised over the 20 year life of the system.

There doesn't seem to have been much reduction in the cost of these systems in recent years, and I think that's because the markets still aren't big enough to see enough innovation and economies of scale. A reduction in costs akin to that seen for PV and wind power is what we need surely.

Posted By: philedgeestablished components and labour

More so than the ditto in PV installation? Those almost equally 'established' items have been radically simplified and redesigned to suit the PV speciality, so installation costs have more than halved AFAIK.

Posted By: philedgeperceived additional running costs

Who perceives that? Maybe true for the (admittedly majority) use of heat pumps feeding existing hi-temp rad systems in hi-loss houses, but when feeding lo-temp emitters (large rads, or UFH) in lo-loss houses ...? Maybe also such perception will fade if gas prices (probably) go higher and higher.

Maybe also such perception will fade if gas prices (probably) go higher and higher.

That’s a given, if you make gas far more expensive then it makes HP’s look more attractive, even more so if electricity prices are reduced as subsidy costs are transferred to gas.
But ramping up gas prices soon to force people to changeover is going to cause hardship, lower income families will be pushed towards being worse of , though those already penalised by the cost of electricity will have the pressure eased ( if prices drop).

But the mixed messages and costs involved are going to alienate your average homeowner, who until this week was expecting to be able to use gas beyond 2030 , giving them plenty of time to decide what to do when their existing boilers needed replacing.

I’m a landlord and my properties are all flats that generally have an EPC of C, those that haven’t will do once two boilers have been changed and IWI is applied to 2 rooms in the rear addition of an 1870’s conversion in a conservation area (my other block is a 2003 build) These all use gas.

My understanding is that my Epc’s rating will suffer if gas gets dearer , if as proposed rental property will need to achieve a C to be rented in the future, my business is finished. I’ll never be able to increase rents to cover the costs of extensive refurbs at the sort of costs i’ve been given ( i’d want to recover the expense over a max of 10 years)

The 1870 terraced building has 4 flats, the front facade has 4 year old double glazed wooden sashes, some have iwi but the assessor said that the windows are so large that insulating the remaining wall area is a pointless exercise for the epc.
The rear elevation has old upvc dg, there are gains to be made with those and by adding more iwi to walls not yet done ( needs an empty flat). Loft has 300mm of glass fibre. All these boilers are under 2 years old. My plan was to review things in 10 years ( hoping that the market would mature and proven solutions appear), dealing with the iwi as the opportunity presented between tenancies.
Fitting heat pumps would be very problematic , realisticaly to make for easy access for servicing and repair they’d need to be in the small rear garden with extensive runs of piping to the individual flats, this in turn creates issues with electrical supplies.
The newer block has solid C’s throughout at present and cost buttons to heat the flats to sensible levels. But if i had to go the HP route it again would be far from easy at present.
Depending on how long i can delay doing something and what the costs are when the time comes, selling to an owner occupier would be the most likely option, at which point nothing needs to be done and the owners would have better than average homes.

In some respects the whole thing is getting daft and the constant change is making it pointless trying to find a cost effective way forward.

Posted By: fostertomMore so than the ditto in PV installation? Those almost equally 'established' items have been radically simplified and redesigned to suit the PV speciality, so installation costs have more than halved AFAIK.

Other than the cable from inverter to consumer unit, all elements of a PV installation were new to the trades that installed them, so quite a learning curve and lots of scope for savings as PV became more common.

Other than the heat pump itself, all other elements of an HP system are established components- copper pipe work, buffer tank, electric supply cable, radiators etc so likely no redesign/simplification to be made on those elements?? If theres a premium added to HP quotes whilst they remain a niche, then maybe that premium will disappear over time??

Philedge

My poorly expressed point was that given the expected changes to the way subsidies are applied to bills, those who were expecting to be able to use gas , as you say, way beyond 2030 at reasonable cost ( i’d have probably fitted new boilers in the last year and expected another 10-15 years of trouble free use) they’re now being put on notice that they’ll possibly be forced by ever higher bills to make a move sooner than they’d wish.

Good point regarding renewing the epc’s even if only those that currently don’t make a C.

Posted By: tonyOnly the diligent do DraughtProofing most don’t care and pay the additional bill or are cold

Way back when, more people did draughtproofing, because the government advertised the need for and benefit of it. Perhaps it's time to recycle those old ad campaigns?

Posted By: djhchange it to free basic set of consumption

Giving anything for free puts little value on it and in the case of energy will guarantee it gets used whether its needed or not.

Probably better to have zero vat/small subsidy up to a low essential level of use per head in the house and after that an exponentially rising rate of VAT/levy to stop the wealthy(most of us) consuming without care.