Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

Chancellor confirms no fossil fuel heating in new homes from 2025 in Spring statement:

Hammond: end of fossil-fuel heating systems in all new houses from 2025

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Chancellor confirms no fossil fuel heating in new homes from 2025 in Spring statement:

Should be from 2020 there is no need to wait and there should be a requirement of 4kWp per house of solar too (or £5k levy to central government if they cant/wont fit the solar perhaps due to local grid constraints)

The reason is a simple electrically heated house costs much less in labor equipment and capital than a gas boiler set up

Not sure heat pumps are necessary or even a good idea on a high insulated new build the capital is probably better on the PV


Interesting would be how much more demand will this add to the grid.
Perhaps 5MWh per house x 0.2 million new builds per year = 1TWh/Yr ?
Not a lot really

GreatApe

Coastalwatch wrote: »

Coupled withOil company's seemingly divesting vast sums of capital in renewable energy. Insurers could well begin to invest heavily as well should the link below eventually come to fruition!


Britain’s insurers could unlock ‘billions of pounds’ of investments for clean energy projects


http://go.pardot.com/e/83602/ounds-of-investments-for-clean/d5qx71/439248160?h=ZJIMX4CAeObhTJE26vz2XfYp9-MjL_65wkLt9ZNow5Y

That does not mean what most people would imagine it to mean

It does not mean billions more capital will flow into wind what it means is the cost of capital (borrowing) for such projects might go down a fraction as more capital is allowed to bid for funding.

It is like a new mortgage provider entering the mortgage market with perhaps (not guaranteed) lower rates on offer

The cost of capital is very important in high capital cost projects like wind farms so this could be a good help if the rates for funding do actually fall but it would be a help in lowering the £/MWh rather than necessarily increasing the rate of deployment

GreatApe

GreatApe wrote: »

Gas boiler ban on new builds

More interesting would be when and if existing homes would be banned from using gas boilers or a type of phase out where broken boilers could only be replaced by electric systems

If that happened it might be as much as 2 million boilers per year switched from gas to electric or heat pump and these switches would use more electricity maybe as much as 8MWh average annually so 16TWh additional demand per year for 15 years

This might need to happen around 2035 so as to decarb home/office/building heating needs by 2050

So it looks like the period 2030-2050 is going to be a high electricity needs growth period especially if EVs actually start ramping around the same time. 2050 demand might be as much as 200TWh more than 2030 demand

UK will need 25GW of new nuclear or 50GW of offshore wind + 20GW of additional backup CCGT to meet that energy demand


The utilities should start to divest their gas grids hopefully to someone who isnt aware that the gas grid is going to become miles and miles of dead infrastructure over the next 20-30 years

Maybe the big gas infrastructure pipes can be repurposed to run electrical interconnectors between countries or nationally

zeupater

GreatApe wrote: »

Should be from 2020 there is no need to wait and there should be a requirement of 4kWp per house of solar too (or £5k levy to central government if they cant/wont fit the solar perhaps due to local grid constraints)

The reason is a simple electrically heated house costs much less in labor equipment and capital than a gas boiler set up

Not sure heat pumps are necessary or even a good idea on a high insulated new build the capital is probably better on the PV


Interesting would be how much more demand will this add to the grid.
Perhaps 5MWh per house x 0.2 million new builds per year = 1TWh/Yr ?
Not a lot really

Hi

Possible reasons that immediately come to mind would include ...

- Existing Plans & Planning
- Orientation
- Roof Size (4kWp on most new houses - really!? ... :wall:)
- Who would pay the levy (developer or DNO?! ... :whistle:)
- Electric resistance heating: Lower capital cost certainly, but at the expense of higher energy bills!
- Heat pump: likely higher capital cost than gas, but similar energy bills.


... and that's just for starters!


:think: .... Also, exactly what proportion of UK PV installations achieve an annual 1250kWh/kWp on a regular basis? .... or even anywhere near that ????? ... taking the effect of a typical mix of roof orientations as well as appropriate sizing of installations to allow for typical roof areas & multi-occupation residences it's far more likely that the 1TWh assessment above is based on something between 2x & 3x overestimation on a per household basis .... combine this with the idea of using resistance heating as opposed to heat-pumps in an all electric scenario & ... :doh::huh:

I only checked this one post at random as the user has been on my ignore list for ages but wanted to see if the content in recent spurts of posts (why mostly in sets of 3!!) had improved, but it seems not! ..... It all just clearly goes to show that the referenced post is simply another in an ongoing series created for nothing other than to spur reaction & argument, showing an alarming lack of the ability to grasp logic & reality yet again !!! ... but at least the usual rhetoric concerning loving, disliking & promoting nuclear seems to have faded away for a while ... :shhh::silenced:


If there wasn't the strong possibility that others could come across this & thread take such nonsense seriously enough to base decisions on what they'd read then most would continue to not reply to such an obvious serial troll, under whatever the latest profile is being used to post ... I just wish that the moderators on these forums would take their responsibilities to enforce their own rules as seriously as the site claims they do!


Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Possible reasons that immediately come to mind would include ...

- Existing Plans & Planning

Z

I'm only guessing, but I suspect that that is the biggy. This requirement will need a lot of change, and 2020 might simply be too much too soon.

Normally, I'd be in favour of 'too much', regarding targets etc, but setting 'them' up for failure would only harm the decision and results, and create negative press and public opinion.

TBH 2025 is very soon, and a shock to me, but good on the government for grasping the nettles and going for it.

Also, I assume that a heat pump requirement will also necessitate an improvement in insulation, and most likely PV too. So a 3 in 1 result - quite a clever policy decision, and not one to be rushed, despite the need to rush IYSWIM.

Looking at the BIG picture, we have leccy generation emissions falling, and costs under control with all wind and PV deployments now at competitive costs. Transport emissions are now higher than leccy emissions, but with profitable mass production BEV's (Tesla on a knife edge, but they've done it) that are also affordable (in terms of total cost of ownership), then that side is now entirely doable, just 15yrs or so for the transition, and now serious plans to address the space heating issue. It's almost like good news!

pile-o-stone

GreatApe wrote: »

Not sure heat pumps are necessary or even a good idea on a high insulated new build the capital is probably better on the PV

I'd argue that the opposite is true. Unless you're talking about a house built to passive standards, which very few are, then you'd still need to provide space heating. You'd also need hot water for washing, etc. In summer, you wouldn't need space heating and solar could provide most of your hot water requirements with diverters and immersion heaters, but in winter and much of spring and autumn you'd be using mains electricity for space heating and hot water which would be prohibitively expensive.

michaels

GreatApe wrote: »

More interesting would be when and if existing homes would be banned from using gas boilers or a type of phase out where broken boilers could only be replaced by electric systems

If that happened it might be as much as 2 million boilers per year switched from gas to electric or heat pump and these switches would use more electricity maybe as much as 8MWh average annually so 16TWh additional demand per year for 15 years

This might need to happen around 2035 so as to decarb home/office/building heating needs by 2050

So it looks like the period 2030-2050 is going to be a high electricity needs growth period especially if EVs actually start ramping around the same time. 2050 demand might be as much as 200TWh more than 2030 demand

UK will need 25GW of new nuclear or 50GW of offshore wind + 20GW of additional backup CCGT to meet that energy demand


The utilities should start to divest their gas grids hopefully to someone who isnt aware that the gas grid is going to become miles and miles of dead infrastructure over the next 20-30 years

Maybe the big gas infrastructure pipes can be repurposed to run electrical interconnectors between countries or nationally

Where are we on using hydrogen to store excess renewable energy to be distributed via the existing natural gas infrastructure?

michaels

As an aside, do we know what proportion of generation has come from wind in the last week or so?

mmmmikey

michaels wrote: »

As an aside, do we know what proportion of generation has come from wind in the last week or so?

Over the last week, other than a dip last Thursday night and Saturday night, it's been generating a reasonably steady 10 to 11 GW - about 30% ish of overall consumption.


Blow blow thou winter wind......