Is there a better way for government to spend our money than green energy?
The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has released a new report that is critical of the Green Homes Grant Scheme. This scheme was meant to insulate 600,000 homes and provide greener heating. However, it was scrapped earlier this year, after only six months.
Only 47,500 homes received a grant, and it ended up costing taxpayers more than £1,000 per property in administration fees.
The PAC said the scheme didn’t take into account a shortage of tradespeople able to carry out the work it was supposed to fund.
It seems so predictable. David Cameron’s Green Deal was much the same.
Introduced in 2013 to slash carbon emissions by offering loans to insulate homes, the National Audit Office found that it had saved ‘negligible amounts of CO2’ by the time it was closed two years later.
Swaffham Prior, the latest village to try a greener scheme that uses a communal heatpump, is Swaffham Prior
Today, I am able to reveal an additional green energy project which looks as big as a turkey.
Near where I live in Cambridgeshire, the county council has thrown £12 million — including a £3.2 million Government grant — at a community heating system powered by a ground-source heat pump (which transfers heat to/from the ground).
The testbed was meant to show how properties can be heated in the future. However, 47 households had not signed up by the December 31 deadline.
So unless there is a last-minute rush of interest, it will end up costing more than £250,000 per house.
It is almost as high as the homes of Swaffham Prior.
Ministers want to force us all into similar programs, however. You might have heard the government propose to ban the installation of gas boilers starting in 2035.
Pictured: How the communal heat pump project at Swaffham Prior will work
Rather less well-known is that the end will come sooner for oil-fired boilers and LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) boilers — used by four million homes that lie beyond the gas mains.
Under the Heat and Buildings Strategy, new installations of these boilers will be banned from 2026, as part of a dash to conform with the Government’s legally binding target of eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050.
So, if my oil boiler fails in five years, I won’t be allowed to replace it with another one.
I’ll either have to find room for a bulky biomass boiler — burning wood pellets — or install an electric pump. The heat is either generated from your house or your backyard.
But heat pumps are very expensive — at an average of £12,000, they cost three times as much as an oil-fired boiler. Moreover, they cost more to run, and, according to some, don’t heat homes sufficiently.
The Government wants to look at other options, including heating homes with a communal pump. This would take advantage of the economies of scale.
Swaffham prior was to act as a pilot project for future heating. However, 47 households had not signed up by the December 31st deadline.
Swaffham Prior Heat network should be the right fit. The plan is to lay pipes beneath a field on the edge of the village, extract heat from the soil and use it to pump hot water to residents’ existing radiators.
Next March will see the water start to flow. The temperature should reach 72c in winter and 72c in summer.
Copenhagen is one example of a city that heats its homes via a system called a “community” which circulates water through the entire area. Nottingham has its own district scheme that heats homes with hot water from the waste incinerator.
Swaffham prior is an example of this.
The most absurd thing about the scheme is that even if all 300 homes in the village had signed up, it would still have cost £40,000 per property.
This is almost four times the cost of installing a heat pump in each home. How on earth did anyone think spending £12 million on a heating scheme for only 300 homes was value for money?
It is true, innovative schemes are more expensive than traditional ones, but prices have a tendency to drop. However, this is far from being financially feasible.
It is so typical of what happens with climate-change policy — all financial sense goes out of the window.
In the Government’s panicked attempt to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, it will throw money after anything.
What has made many residents baulk at signing up for the scheme is a clause in the contract which says it can be discontinued with two year’s notice if it turns out to be unviable. This would mean that they wouldn’t have heating.
All of us want to use clean energy. However, there are no heating options on the market that can match the price of oil or gas.
Britain already has 2.4 million households living in ‘fuel poverty’, according to government figures. Technology will not change quickly, and that trend could accelerate once central heating is banned for oil or gas.
If the Swaffham Prior project is anything to go by, you’d need the deep pockets of a millionaire before you could contemplate joining an unsubsidised district heating scheme.
Lume Books publishes Ross Clark’s The Denial.