JOHN HUMPHRYS: My heat pump has me left in the cold… but I’m hot and bothered about the PM

My first attempt at burning down our house was less successful than my second. It was the morning after Bonfire Night, and I was a small boy.

My mother was gone and I was bored. I decided to collect the rockets that were littering the streets and throw them in the fire.

The result was spectacular … and so was my mother’s reaction when she had to call the fire brigade to deal with the blaze in the chimney!

The house was also a derelict cottage at our West Wales dairy farm.

We’d spent a year renovating, and I had stupidly draped some damp sheets over an electric airing cabinet in a bedroom, thus blocking the vents, and had gone off to milk the cows. 

The bedroom was blazing when I returned. The walls were gone by the time the fire brigade arrived.

It was almost 40 years ago. I’ve renovated another ruin in West Wales since then and I can guarantee it’s proofed against the worst of my pyrotechnic tendencies.

Boris Johnson would be proud that I have the heating system that he wants all of us to install.

Boris Johnson told us this week that if we are to meet the Government’s targets for reducing carbon emissions we must abandon our gas boilers and install heat pumps. I was ahead!

He told us this week that if we are to meet the Government’s targets for reducing carbon emissions we must abandon our gas boilers and install heat pumps. I was a step ahead of the game.

The conditions were perfect. The house was being rebuilt from scratch, so we laid the underfloor pipes before the floors were installed. 

Although the walls were constructed of stone, our insulation was up to the standards set by strict building regulations.

The best part was that the ground behind the house was perfect for laying pipes for a ground-source system. This is much more efficient than the air source option that is used in many homes in cities.

It was expensive, but it was worthwhile. I was helping the planet, and saving myself the price of buying polluting oil. 

I realized it was a win-win. A comfortable house no matter what the weather is like and a minimal energy bill.

But I was wrong. I hadn’t even considered the electricity required to run the pump. 

Not a big problem because I’d also installed an array of solar panels. But you can’t do that in a small semi or a flat.

The real killer was that it didn’t do its job. I have never been able to find a warm home in the middle-of-winter. 

My lovely neighbor can turn it on a couple days before I arrive to take the chill out of the downstairs rooms. But that’s about it. 

To get really warm, I need to turn on the log-burning stove. This is not an option in your suburban semi.

The sad reality is I’ve spent a small fortune and have not ended up with a cosy house.

And I wonder: how many of us would — or even could — pay at least £10,000 for a heating system to replace our polluting but efficient gas boiler for something that just takes the chill off?

I realized it was a win-win. You get a warm house no matter what the weather is and a small energy bill. But I was wrong. [File picture]

Yes, that’s what it costs. The promise of a £5,000 grant from next April is only for the lucky few.  The Government’s own target is 600,000 heat pumps a year. 

Only 30,000 will be covered by the handouts. It will only last for three years. Maybe the tooth fairy will be able to help.

This is not a joke. The world is in real crisis. 

It’s true that this country accounts for less than 1 per cent of the carbon that’s wrecking our precious atmosphere. China is responsible for 28% and is increasing its use coal to generate electricity.

But it is important at home because this issue is moral. We must do all we can to repair the horrible damage that we have done and stop it from getting worse.

That’s why Boris Johnson’s statement this week should fill us with both despair and anger — specifically at the lack of detail. He promises that this country will be ‘net zero’ by 2050, but does not tell us how.

That’s because he’s scared of the electorate. He knows that in order to meet the targets, there must be huge technical advances in crucial areas like carbon capture & storage and hydrogen production using fossil fuels.

It will be expensive, and he wants us all to believe that the private sector should pay the highest bills. 

Otherwise taxpayers will have to, which will not be popular — and Boris wants very badly to be popular.

He’s hardly unique. But he obviously believes if he can jolly us along with his feel-good approach, throwing in the odd joke, we’ll sit at his feet like an adoring puppy gazing up at its master.

I am not saying that smelly kids are the answer to our climate crisis, but here’s one suggestion that’s slightly less tongue-in-cheek: what if the Government dished out free thermal vests?

He used a phrase this past week to mock our gullibility. We can build back greener, he said, ‘without so much as a hair shirt in sight’.

This is either stupidity or cynicism. Perhaps both. The single event that enabled humanity to overcome the poverty of the masses was the discovery and use of fossil fuels.

They changed everything with the energy they contained. It enabled the industrial revolution. It made electricity possible.

Now we are on a journey to a future without fossil fuels, and it’s fraught with hazards.

The Prime Minister underestimates intelligence of millions of people in this country who are worried that if we continue living as we have, we will betray our children and their children. 

Renewable energy is vital, but it’s not enough. We have to change how we live.

But the elimination of petrol and diesel cars will result in a significant increase in electricity usage. Kerosene will be needed by planes for the foreseeable future. We still need to heat our homes, offices, and businesses.

We must travel less. Turn down the thermostat. Maybe even learn something from my parents’ generation; when it got cold our mothers buttoned up us kids in weird garments called liberty bodices. 

Padded vests we couldn’t take off even if we wanted to. We must have been a bit sloppy in the first week, but no one seemed to notice.

I am not saying that smelly kids are the answer to our climate crisis, but here’s one suggestion that’s slightly less tongue-in-cheek: what if the Government dished out free thermal vests?

It might cost a few hundred million, but they’d have to be made in Britain so there would be some economic benefit from the jobs created. And think how much energy we’d save if we discovered we need not live in saunas.

Maybe. But are thermal vests really any more bonkers than Boris’s hair-shirt fantasy?