{"id":262953,"date":"2023-06-20T11:33:34","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T09:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=262953"},"modified":"2023-06-20T11:33:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T09:33:37","slug":"smart-meters-are-a-trial-run-for-an-even-greater-heat-pump-disaster-to-come-simon-heffer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=262953","title":{"rendered":"Smart meters are a trial run for an even greater heat pump disaster to come\u2013Simon Heffer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Paul Homewood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

h\/t Philip Bratby<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon Heffer has been rather quiet about Net Zero lately, so it\u2019s good to see him join the fray:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should be used by now to one <\/em>crackpot environmentalist<\/em><\/a> idea after another being imposed upon us, but they retain the power to create outrage. We learned last week that a tenth of smart meters in British homes, or around three million of them, are faulty. Technology is not, it seems, as wonderful as those who inflict it on us \u2013 in this case, politicians virtue-signalling to cranks oblivious to the economic realities that keep families, businesses and the country solvent \u2013 like to pretend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as with many green fantasies, there is incompetence. The Government is way behind its target of <\/em>getting these malfunctioning meters into 80 per cent of homes<\/em><\/a> by 2025, not least because of a shortage of installers. And those who do install are accused of prioritising quantity over quality, hence so many going haywire.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My objection to such things is not based on born-again luddism, but on repeated evidence of supposedly planet-saving ideas being profoundly economically destructive: and smart meters are only a small foretaste of the horror to come. On Friday, we reported that because of the Government\u2019s unthinking obsession with banning all new oil boilers, people in rural households \u2013 those of us living nowhere near the gas grid \u2013 would, if forced instead to use heat pumps, suffer a 70 per cent rise in their energy bills.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a time when many people are struggling to feed their families thanks to the huge rise in inflation, caused partly by the insane pumping of money into the economy during the pandemic and a too-slow rise in interest rates after it, the idea of the cost of keeping warm <\/em>rocketing by more than two-thirds<\/em><\/a> should, if you will forgive the expression, chill the blood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But grinding poverty is, so far as ministers are concerned, a price worth paying for <\/em>the cult of net zero<\/em><\/a>. Few independent experts pretend that either solar power or wind power are remotely adequate for the needs of heating and powering a country of approaching 70 million people. We are facing this serious crisis because of the demented opposition to nuclear power that has taken root in the last 20 years \u2013 a bacillus that entered the Conservative Party\u2019s bloodstream with the leadership of Dave Cameron \u2013 and a chronic determination to make promises about improving our environmental record that would undermine the economy of any advanced country that relies on the generation of electricity, the heating of buildings and water and, of course, on moving people and goods around from A to B.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps some time in the 2030s ministers will be deputed not only to tell us to brush our teeth in the dark \u2013 as the late Patrick Jenkin famously did in the 1973-74 energy crisis \u2013 but to put on an extra jumper or two, and to snuggle up with other humans or, failing that, domestic pets as hot water bottles. We could collect brushwood for camp fires to do our cooking and around which to huddle to keep warm, at least until the carbon-emissions fascists catch up with us.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fetish of net zero, and the <\/em>growing deference to environmental activist groups<\/em><\/a> (who have now moved on from gluing themselves to roads and climbing up motorway gantries to protesting in the luxury of Glyndebourne, where they unleashed a presumably biodegradable confetti bomb during a Poulenc opera on Thursday), seems to have paralysed our rulers into inaction.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has to stop, because otherwise there will be mounting public outrage and economic collapse as we give up even attempting to compete with, among others, the rampantly-polluting Chinese.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government plans to <\/em>introduce 600,000 heat pumps a year<\/em><\/a> \u2013 for the moment by consent \u2013 but has no plans of what to do in households where this is entirely impractical. As Sir Bill Wiggin, the MP for North Herefordshire, has pointed out, it\u2019s not just detachment from the gas grid that requires many rural households to be heated by oil, but the fact that numerous properties in such areas are listed buildings. Without destroying part of their protected fabric, these often cannot accommodate these pumps.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And above all there is the expense: the average oil boiler costs \u00a32,500, the average heat pump \u00a313,000, according to the Energy and Utilities Alliance. In a depressing continuation of the Government\u2019s desire <\/em>to intervene and spend money recklessly<\/em><\/a>, it offers grants of between \u00a35,000 and \u00a36,000 to those wishing to install such pumps \u2013 though the public are so uninterested in this pointless scheme that millions set aside for subsidies are being handed back to the Treasury. Will ministers offer, in perpetuity, grants to cushion the running costs too? What would that do to Britain\u2019s already suffocating tax burden?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rishi Sunak<\/em><\/a> has in other respects shown himself willing to depart from the ill-considered policies of his predecessors, and as a matter of urgency he should think again about his environmental policy. The boiler ban after 2026 must go: it is an outrageous interference in domestic life, and when thousands of voters in the Tory heartland find they are forced to buy ruinously expensive heat pumps, they will revolt accordingly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, for similar reasons, Mr Sunak should delay indefinitely the ban from 2030 on selling new non-electric cars, whose economic and practical damage he cannot go on ignoring \u2013 whether because of the lack of enough electricity to run them, the slowness of charging them, the destruction caused by lithium mining or even the potential collapse of multi-storey car parks under the vast weight of electric cars. God knows, his party needs a re-launch and to cheer up people who think it inhabits a parallel universe. What better place to start than by ditching all this absurdity, and announcing a new nuclear programme?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2023\/06\/17\/smart-meters-are-a-trial-run-for-an-even-greater-heat-pump\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tories are dead and buried at the next election with the way things stand at the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They may have a glimmer of a chance if Rishi Sunak used his new premiership to change course on Net Zero with two specific promises:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) Conventional oil and gas boilers will not be banned until there is an alternative available which is as cheap to instal and run, and which heats the home properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Petrol and diesel cars will not be banned either until EVs prices are competitive and every driver has full and easy access to rapid chargers in the same way they do to petrol stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We should be used by now to one\u00a0crackpot environmentalist\u00a0idea after another being imposed upon us, but they retain the power to create outrage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":262957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818567,691818510,691818154,691820257],"class_list":{"0":"post-262953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-disaster","9":"tag-heat-pump","10":"tag-net-zero","11":"tag-smart-meters","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/00Smart-Meter.jpg?fit=2239%2C1259&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-16pb","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":254510,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=254510","url_meta":{"origin":262953,"position":0},"title":"Big Brother: German Bundestag Approves Law To Accelerate Installation of Smart Meters","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"25\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Large household electricity consumption devices like heat pumps, electric cars may be throttled or completely switched off by the grid operators.","rel":"","context":"In \"2030\"","block_context":{"text":"2030","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=2030"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0bbiwy.jpg?fit=1200%2C641&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0bbiwy.jpg?fit=1200%2C641&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0bbiwy.jpg?fit=1200%2C641&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0bbiwy.jpg?fit=1200%2C641&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0bbiwy.jpg?fit=1200%2C641&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":254977,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=254977","url_meta":{"origin":262953,"position":1},"title":"Are Heat Pumps Cheaper To Run? 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