The move to heat pumps

[Deleted User]

This is what Octopus is saying as they build a £M heat pump R and D facility:

https://octopus.energy/blog/heat-pumps/

Reed_Richards

Dolor said:

This is what Octopus is saying as they build a £M heat pump R and D facility:

https://octopus.energy/blog/heat-pumps/

Not all true.  In 1998 I bought a gas boiler (from a company called Atag) that could modulate down to very low outputs, had a thermostat mounted on the eaves for weather compensation and would also do load compensation based on the difference between the temperature recorded on the room thermostat and the set temperature.  ASHPs seem to have quite a high minimum output so mine cycles on and off whereas the gas boiler would have modulated down to a low level and stayed on.  My ASHP does weather compensation but not load compensation; when I was looking to buy I could not find any model that would do this.  So from my perspective ASHPs are not nearly as "smart" as the gas boiler in my old house - which is perhaps why Octopus thinks it is worthwhile putting money into heat pump R&D.

Martyn1981

Mickey666 said:

Hexane said:

Dolor said:

Shifting green taxes to gas will just p**** off the masses.

Good! It's gas being so cheap that encourages people to keep on burning so much of it and not bother insulating their homes properly because they just don't care - they can just turn the heating up! Until the, as Martyn puts it, externality costs are reflected in the cost of the fuel, nothing is going to change. And it has to change, we can't go on like that.

Hmm.  Easy to say, not easy to solve.  Sure, it's 'simple' to tax fossil fuels into being more expensive than renewable alternatives but not everyone cares about the best interests of the environment, especially when they've been taxed into fuel poverty and they're shivering in a country sitting on centuries worth of coal stocks.  Revolutions have begun over lesser things and governments tend to take more notice of rioting in the streets than worrying about end of the century climate change.

These are primarily sociological problems rather than technological ones.

The real elephant in the room is global population growth, which has almost trebled in my lifetime.  Imagine what fewer environmental problems we'd have with only 2.5bn people on the planet instead of 7bn and rising.  Not only do governments and pressure groups have a very hard sell to wean the public off fossil fuels in the first place, they have to do it against a background of a rising global population and rising global living standards such that we're being asked to pay more for a lower standard of living and ultimately it won't prevent climate change anyway!

Basically, humanity won the lottery when it discovered fossil fuels a few hundred years ago and the winnings (basically unimaginable energy wealth) have funded astonishing growth and the unprecedented rise of our global industrial civilisation.  But we've almost spent these winnings and in doing so have inflicted tremendous environmental damage.  In short, our civilisation is not sustainable, and no amount of windmills and solar panels is going to change that for our current global population, never mind for the projected additional 3-4billion people by the end of the century.

Something is going to have to give and it isn't going to be pretty.

This seems to be a common negative thrown up, whenever attempts are made to reduce the use of FF's.
Are there too many people on the planet, I suppose, but it is what it is, and we can't solve that problem now. Can we address population growth, yes, and we have, the birthrate has now stabilised, but with longer life expectancies, we can expect the population to grow to ~11bn.

Is this sustainable, well, again, less would be better, but based on an Indian style diet, we already have more than enough farmland to feed a population of 11bn, and as there are no scaleability issues for wind and PV, there is no problem replacing our final energy demands with RE. In fact, we will see a massive reduction in primary energy consumption, since the majority of energy in FF's is wasted - consider petrol cars, they are at best around 25% efficient, and that's before we consider the downstream costs/energy consumption - exploration, extraction, shipping, refining, transporting, all to reach the petrol station.

So, can we avert AGW, no, it's too late, it's going to be bad, but we can hopefully still avoid runaway global warming. But how - switching from FF use asap, and not wasting time nor being distracted by diversionary arguments, such as 'the problem is the size of the population', when there is no rational/ethical solution to that part of the equation.

Probably the most important move made recently, is the worldwide adoption (since 2019(ish)) of more descriptive terminology, such as 'climate crisis' or 'climate emergency', since climate change and global warming have never really invoked the necessary urgency.

So, should our gas prices go up by around 1p/kWh, of course it should, why do we think we can enjoy a product without accounting for all its costs. Will this upset people, of course, but it's so important to understand that the product isn't being made more expensive, it was simply sold to us previously for far less than it should have.

And will bills rise? Not necessarily. We can ring fence carbon taxes and use them to reduce energy demand for households by improving the incredibly poor UK housing stock (a reflection of cheap coal, then cheap gas), and reducing demand. We can focus support and spending on poorer households, communities, and fuel poverty. We could even redistribute carbon taxes to all households via a simple(!) payout, and householders/customers could then reduce their expenses by avoiding goods and services with 'too' high a price, because their carbon costs have pushed prices higher.

Solarchaser

My concern with raising gas prices is with folk who are already struggling, you plunge them into darkness. 
There are several ways to see that off, UBI would be a good start, however with the current UK government, id expect more like party donors will suddenly be supplying insulation at 5 times market average and yet still be preferred supplier.

Call me cynical, you would be right

Mickey666

Martyn1981 said:

Mickey666 said:

Hexane said:

Dolor said:

Shifting green taxes to gas will just p**** off the masses.

Good! It's gas being so cheap that encourages people to keep on burning so much of it and not bother insulating their homes properly because they just don't care - they can just turn the heating up! Until the, as Martyn puts it, externality costs are reflected in the cost of the fuel, nothing is going to change. And it has to change, we can't go on like that.

Hmm.  Easy to say, not easy to solve.  Sure, it's 'simple' to tax fossil fuels into being more expensive than renewable alternatives but not everyone cares about the best interests of the environment, especially when they've been taxed into fuel poverty and they're shivering in a country sitting on centuries worth of coal stocks.  Revolutions have begun over lesser things and governments tend to take more notice of rioting in the streets than worrying about end of the century climate change.

These are primarily sociological problems rather than technological ones.

The real elephant in the room is global population growth, which has almost trebled in my lifetime.  Imagine what fewer environmental problems we'd have with only 2.5bn people on the planet instead of 7bn and rising.  Not only do governments and pressure groups have a very hard sell to wean the public off fossil fuels in the first place, they have to do it against a background of a rising global population and rising global living standards such that we're being asked to pay more for a lower standard of living and ultimately it won't prevent climate change anyway!

Basically, humanity won the lottery when it discovered fossil fuels a few hundred years ago and the winnings (basically unimaginable energy wealth) have funded astonishing growth and the unprecedented rise of our global industrial civilisation.  But we've almost spent these winnings and in doing so have inflicted tremendous environmental damage.  In short, our civilisation is not sustainable, and no amount of windmills and solar panels is going to change that for our current global population, never mind for the projected additional 3-4billion people by the end of the century.

Something is going to have to give and it isn't going to be pretty.

This seems to be a common negative thrown up, whenever attempts are made to reduce the use of FF's.
Are there too many people on the planet, I suppose, but it is what it is, and we can't solve that problem now. Can we address population growth, yes, and we have, the birthrate has now stabilised, but with longer life expectancies, we can expect the population to grow to ~11bn.

Is this sustainable, well, again, less would be better, but based on an Indian style diet, we already have more than enough farmland to feed a population of 11bn, and as there are no scaleability issues for wind and PV, there is no problem replacing our final energy demands with RE. In fact, we will see a massive reduction in primary energy consumption, since the majority of energy in FF's is wasted - consider petrol cars, they are at best around 25% efficient, and that's before we consider the downstream costs/energy consumption - exploration, extraction, shipping, refining, transporting, all to reach the petrol station.

So, can we avert AGW, no, it's too late, it's going to be bad, but we can hopefully still avoid runaway global warming. But how - switching from FF use asap, and not wasting time nor being distracted by diversionary arguments, such as 'the problem is the size of the population', when there is no rational/ethical solution to that part of the equation.

Probably the most important move made recently, is the worldwide adoption (since 2019(ish)) of more descriptive terminology, such as 'climate crisis' or 'climate emergency', since climate change and global warming have never really invoked the necessary urgency.

So, should our gas prices go up by around 1p/kWh, of course it should, why do we think we can enjoy a product without accounting for all its costs. Will this upset people, of course, but it's so important to understand that the product isn't being made more expensive, it was simply sold to us previously for far less than it should have.

And will bills rise? Not necessarily. We can ring fence carbon taxes and use them to reduce energy demand for households by improving the incredibly poor UK housing stock (a reflection of cheap coal, then cheap gas), and reducing demand. We can focus support and spending on poorer households, communities, and fuel poverty. We could even redistribute carbon taxes to all households via a simple(!) payout, and householders/customers could then reduce their expenses by avoiding goods and services with 'too' high a price, because their carbon costs have pushed prices higher.

I think you're missing the point.  I agree that technology can solve a lot of our problems (indeed it already has done, ie food production), I agree that we can (probably) sustain a global population of 11bn by the end of the century, but the issue - the sociological issue - is going to persuade people (in 'the west' anyway) that their standard of living must reduce because our current way of life is unsustainable.  Our ecological footprint exceeds the raw capability of the planet to recover from our demands on it.  This is not just about fossil fuels, it's about everything.  Soething like 3/4 of the planet's surface has been reshaped by humans.  We're all aware today of the evils of deforestation in places like the Amazon basin yet we tend to forget that England (and most of Europe) was once fully forested but we've already destroyed all but a few pockets of ancient woodland.  We've become accustomed to delight in the 'natural' beauty of the countryside but have forgotten that very little of it is actually 'natural' - it has been sculpted by humans as we plunder the planet to support our ever increasing numbers.

You accuse me of pedalling negative views but there's only one thing worse than a pessimist pointing out an inconvenient truth and that's a blind optimist blithely believing that there is nothing that human ingenuity cannot solve.  If we don't acknowledge the problem we won't seek a solution - all we'll do is focus on short term issues and ignore the real fundamentals.  This is partly down to human nature (who wants to hear doom and gloom anyway, just party on while we can) and partly down to not having any effective form of global governance that can provide the necessary focus (and authority) to deal with the fundamental problems we're facing.  Yes, we have global organisations supposedly leading the charge to 'save the planet', but they have no teeth.  It only takes one maverick national leader to deny support for impoverishing their country and popularism does the rest, because who want's to be the turkey voting for Christmas?

Individuals can be rational but history shows that en masse humans are more likely to behave irrationally.  Conflict is the historically defining characteristic of humanity, it still dominates our daily news and it probably always will.  THAT is what we have to deal with but we have no idea how.  As I said, these are sociological problems (including population growth), not technological ones and as such are the ones that REALLY need to be solved. 

I know the old Titanic metaphor is overused but perhaps that's because it's so accurate.  If we don't fix the fundamentals (hole in the ship, global over population) then ultimately nothing else matters and we're simply distracting ourselves with new technology (rearranging the deckchairs) that will do nothing to fix the fundamental problem.  Classic head in the sand mentality - we can't fix the fundamental problem so lets all keep busy to keep our minds off it and if we're lucky we'll be able to muddle along for a but longer.  Global sustainability is a bit like being pregnant - we can't be a 'little bit' sustainable, it's all or nothing.  Being 'a little bit' sustainable only delays the inevitable, which might be a good thing as far as our children and grandchildren are concerned but it's not going to save humanity or the planet, as we know it.  

Martyn1981

Mickey666 said:

Martyn1981 said:

Mickey666 said:

Hexane said:

Dolor said:

Shifting green taxes to gas will just p**** off the masses.

Good! It's gas being so cheap that encourages people to keep on burning so much of it and not bother insulating their homes properly because they just don't care - they can just turn the heating up! Until the, as Martyn puts it, externality costs are reflected in the cost of the fuel, nothing is going to change. And it has to change, we can't go on like that.

Hmm.  Easy to say, not easy to solve.  Sure, it's 'simple' to tax fossil fuels into being more expensive than renewable alternatives but not everyone cares about the best interests of the environment, especially when they've been taxed into fuel poverty and they're shivering in a country sitting on centuries worth of coal stocks.  Revolutions have begun over lesser things and governments tend to take more notice of rioting in the streets than worrying about end of the century climate change.

These are primarily sociological problems rather than technological ones.

The real elephant in the room is global population growth, which has almost trebled in my lifetime.  Imagine what fewer environmental problems we'd have with only 2.5bn people on the planet instead of 7bn and rising.  Not only do governments and pressure groups have a very hard sell to wean the public off fossil fuels in the first place, they have to do it against a background of a rising global population and rising global living standards such that we're being asked to pay more for a lower standard of living and ultimately it won't prevent climate change anyway!

Basically, humanity won the lottery when it discovered fossil fuels a few hundred years ago and the winnings (basically unimaginable energy wealth) have funded astonishing growth and the unprecedented rise of our global industrial civilisation.  But we've almost spent these winnings and in doing so have inflicted tremendous environmental damage.  In short, our civilisation is not sustainable, and no amount of windmills and solar panels is going to change that for our current global population, never mind for the projected additional 3-4billion people by the end of the century.

Something is going to have to give and it isn't going to be pretty.

This seems to be a common negative thrown up, whenever attempts are made to reduce the use of FF's.
Are there too many people on the planet, I suppose, but it is what it is, and we can't solve that problem now. Can we address population growth, yes, and we have, the birthrate has now stabilised, but with longer life expectancies, we can expect the population to grow to ~11bn.

Is this sustainable, well, again, less would be better, but based on an Indian style diet, we already have more than enough farmland to feed a population of 11bn, and as there are no scaleability issues for wind and PV, there is no problem replacing our final energy demands with RE. In fact, we will see a massive reduction in primary energy consumption, since the majority of energy in FF's is wasted - consider petrol cars, they are at best around 25% efficient, and that's before we consider the downstream costs/energy consumption - exploration, extraction, shipping, refining, transporting, all to reach the petrol station.

So, can we avert AGW, no, it's too late, it's going to be bad, but we can hopefully still avoid runaway global warming. But how - switching from FF use asap, and not wasting time nor being distracted by diversionary arguments, such as 'the problem is the size of the population', when there is no rational/ethical solution to that part of the equation.

Probably the most important move made recently, is the worldwide adoption (since 2019(ish)) of more descriptive terminology, such as 'climate crisis' or 'climate emergency', since climate change and global warming have never really invoked the necessary urgency.

So, should our gas prices go up by around 1p/kWh, of course it should, why do we think we can enjoy a product without accounting for all its costs. Will this upset people, of course, but it's so important to understand that the product isn't being made more expensive, it was simply sold to us previously for far less than it should have.

And will bills rise? Not necessarily. We can ring fence carbon taxes and use them to reduce energy demand for households by improving the incredibly poor UK housing stock (a reflection of cheap coal, then cheap gas), and reducing demand. We can focus support and spending on poorer households, communities, and fuel poverty. We could even redistribute carbon taxes to all households via a simple(!) payout, and householders/customers could then reduce their expenses by avoiding goods and services with 'too' high a price, because their carbon costs have pushed prices higher.

I think you're missing the point.  I agree that technology can solve a lot of our problems (indeed it already has done, ie food production), I agree that we can (probably) sustain a global population of 11bn by the end of the century, but the issue - the sociological issue - is going to persuade people (in 'the west' anyway) that their standard of living must reduce because our current way of life is unsustainable.  Our ecological footprint exceeds the raw capability of the planet to recover from our demands on it.  This is not just about fossil fuels, it's about everything.  Soething like 3/4 of the planet's surface has been reshaped by humans.  We're all aware today of the evils of deforestation in places like the Amazon basin yet we tend to forget that England (and most of Europe) was once fully forested but we've already destroyed all but a few pockets of ancient woodland.  We've become accustomed to delight in the 'natural' beauty of the countryside but have forgotten that very little of it is actually 'natural' - it has been sculpted by humans as we plunder the planet to support our ever increasing numbers.

You accuse me of pedalling negative views but there's only one thing worse than a pessimist pointing out an inconvenient truth and that's a blind optimist blithely believing that there is nothing that human ingenuity cannot solve.  If we don't acknowledge the problem we won't seek a solution - all we'll do is focus on short term issues and ignore the real fundamentals.  This is partly down to human nature (who wants to hear doom and gloom anyway, just party on while we can) and partly down to not having any effective form of global governance that can provide the necessary focus (and authority) to deal with the fundamental problems we're facing.  Yes, we have global organisations supposedly leading the charge to 'save the planet', but they have no teeth.  It only takes one maverick national leader to deny support for impoverishing their country and popularism does the rest, because who want's to be the turkey voting for Christmas?

Individuals can be rational but history shows that en masse humans are more likely to behave irrationally.  Conflict is the historically defining characteristic of humanity, it still dominates our daily news and it probably always will.  THAT is what we have to deal with but we have no idea how.  As I said, these are sociological problems (including population growth), not technological ones and as such are the ones that REALLY need to be solved. 

I know the old Titanic metaphor is overused but perhaps that's because it's so accurate.  If we don't fix the fundamentals (hole in the ship, global over population) then ultimately nothing else matters and we're simply distracting ourselves with new technology (rearranging the deckchairs) that will do nothing to fix the fundamental problem.  Classic head in the sand mentality - we can't fix the fundamental problem so lets all keep busy to keep our minds off it and if we're lucky we'll be able to muddle along for a but longer.  Global sustainability is a bit like being pregnant - we can't be a 'little bit' sustainable, it's all or nothing.  Being 'a little bit' sustainable only delays the inevitable, which might be a good thing as far as our children and grandchildren are concerned but it's not going to save humanity or the planet, as we know it.  

No, it's not that you are pedalling an inconvienient truth, it's that you are inserting an irrelevance into the discussion, and this will happen in almost any discussion, on any forum, when it's pointed out that FF use needs to be reduced.
Someone will always distract from the primary goal - reduce FF consumption asap - with the false argument that the birth rate hasn't stabilised, and that the population is the problem.
We have to eliminate FF use, it's as simple as that, and the good news is that we have more than enough resources (wind, sun and water) to do this, and the conomics are now on the side of RE.
Whereas, I'm going to bet that you have absolutely no solution whatsoever to the World population (neither do I), and I'd also suggest that there isn't one, certainly none that are ethical / moral. If you can't offer a solution to this side of the equation, then exactly how are you helping to solve the problem?

BTW - flip your example over, and I'd suggest you are the one with their head in the sand, ignoring the solution, or belittling it with statements such as "being 'a little bit' sustainable". Or trying the old and tired argument about 'us' having to accept a greatly reduced standard of living - why, don't you like clean energy, better air quality, less noise pollution? The solution to the problem is eliminating FF use asap, since (again) you have no solution to the population issue.

Distractions are extremely dangerous! 
What about the science?
What about clean coal?
What about nuclear, or SMR's?
What about FF + CCS?
What about the population size?
These tactics have been used for five decades now to help us avoid the real problem, burning FF's. Whataboutery doesn't help anyone, it simply creates false hope, delays, FF industry profits, and an innocent scapegoat.

Mickey666

Hexane said:

Hexane said:

Dolor said:

Shifting green taxes to gas will just p**** off the masses.

Good! It's gas being so cheap that encourages people to keep on burning so much of it and not bother insulating their homes properly because they just don't care - they can just turn the heating up! Until the, as Martyn puts it, externality costs are reflected in the cost of the fuel, nothing is going to change. And it has to change, we can't go on like that.

In short, our civilisation is not sustainable, 

Yes indeed; Malthus came to that conclusion shortly after the population of England topped the alarming figure of ten million.

What's your definition of sustainable?  Mine is something that can be sustained indefinitely.  Our industrial society is already in trouble after a couple of hundred years, which doesn't seem to bode well for 'indefinitely' does it?

We often use 'dinosaur' in a disparaging manner while forgetting that they were the dominant species for around 160 million years.  Meanwhile, humans have only existed for about 300,000 years, with our 'civilisations' only arising about 6000 years ago and our industrial revolution about 200 years ago.  The vast majority of our environmental damage has been inflicted in the past 200 years - we've reproduced to plague proportions, we've polluted everywhere and are facing runaway global warming.  Doesn't sound very 'sustainable' to me.  Perhaps Malthus was right?

[Deleted User]

The idea population growth is leading us to environmental catastrophe is little more than a popular myth. It's the sort of thing that sounds reasonable but governments/experts stopped being concerned about population growth decades ago.

Long-term projections of the global population are actually that we're going to go into sharp population decline in the near future (what we're in at the moment is a bit like when you throw a tennis ball up in the air and it slows to a peak - i.e. it's still rising but we know it's going to fall very soon). A lot of people are completely unaware of this, but the real debate that governments are having is about how to manage population decline. Once that decline starts it will spiral exponentially. 

The other reason why population growth isn't a major problem is that the distribution of emissions/use of resources is extremely unequal. Population growth in the short-term is being driven by places like sub-Saharan Africa that use a fraction of the resources per capita that developed countries use (i.e. countries that are heading for declining populations).

Mickey666

gordon_harris said:

The idea population growth is leading us to environmental catastrophe is little more than a popular myth. It's the sort of thing that sounds reasonable but governments/experts stopped being concerned about population growth decades ago.

Long-term projections of the global population are actually that we're going to go into sharp population decline in the near future (what we're in at the moment is a bit like when you throw a tennis ball up in the air and it slows to a peak - i.e. it's still rising but we know it's going to fall very soon). A lot of people are completely unaware of this, but the real debate that governments are having is about how to manage population decline. Once that decline starts it will spiral exponentially. 

The other reason why population growth isn't a major problem is that the distribution of emissions/use of resources is extremely unequal. Population growth in the short-term is being driven by places like sub-Saharan Africa that use a fraction of the resources per capita that developed countries use (i.e. countries that are heading for declining populations).

It's not population GROWTH that's leading us into environmental catastrophe it is our CURRENT unsustainable population level, coupled with our ever-increasing standards of living.   https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint

You're absolutely right that emissions and use of resources is distributed unequally around the world and that areas with higher population growth are among the areas with the lowest consumption of resources and consequently emissions.  But would you like to have the living standards of the average sub-Saharan African?  If we did then we would have no environmental problems

You're also ignoring the point that these are 'developing countries', ie aiming to develop their standards of living to equal ours (and why shouldn't they?).  Look at China over the past 50 years - from a basically subsistence agrarian population to a modern hi-tech industrial population with living standards as high as 'the west'.  They might have been living sustainably 50 years ago but they certainly are not today.  And this is happening around the planet with EXISTING population levels.

If we measure our ecological demands in terms of planets, then we are ALREADY higher than 1, ie that level that IS sustainable.  So this is not a FUTURE problem because of rising population, it's a problem with our CURRENT population (and living standards).  The fullest IMPACTS of overpopulation may be a future issue, but that impact is already 'baked in'.
Check out this map of ecological footprints per country: https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/?

Put simply - we're ALREADY living beyond our ecological and environmental means.

Putting that into terms more understandable for a money-orientated forum, we can all improve out standard of living temporarily simply by borrowing money and spending it on living the high life.  Bet we also know that doing so is simply not SUSTAINABLE.  Sooner or later, living beyond our means gets us into serious problems - and that's exactly what we are ALREADY doing in planetary terms.  We are consuming resources faster than the planet is capable of regenerating them - the very definition of unsustainable.

QrizB

Mickey666 said:

... we also know that doing so is simply not SUSTAINABLE.  Sooner or later, living beyond our means gets us into serious problems - and that's exactly what we are ALREADY doing in planetary terms.  We are consuming resources faster than the planet is capable of regenerating them - the very definition of unsustainable.

You've said this several times but I'm not at all convinced that it's true.

All* the iron, aluminium, copper, lithium, oxygen (etc) that is on the planet today, was here a million years ago and will still be here a million years hence. All humans do is move it around. Historically we've been very good at using high-purity natural sources for this (think of the industrial revolution, fuelled in the UK by iron and coal that was extractable by pre-industrial means) but as those have been exhausted we've moved to lower-value materials that we can concentrate up ourselves (gold mines are an extreme example, being viable with ores at 5 grams per tonne, 5 parts per million).

The one thing where this isn't true is energy. Energy is what makes it possible to turn a lean source into a rich one, and fossil fuels have been the source of mankind's energy since, well, the industrial revolution. It's the global environmental effect of fossil fuel use that's causing the climate emergency, and it's the thing we need to fix irrespective of population.

If we can supply enough energy, do so without destroying the climate, population really isn't an issue. With enough clean energy we could have 100 billion on the planet, all with adequate food, clothing and housing.

* Caveat: we lose a bit of atmosphere to space every day, and we gain a bit of rock the same way. And we've sent a few tons of matter off-planet ourselves. This is all noise in the grand scheme of things, over any period of time likely to concern the human race.