SNP plan to outlaw sale of houses with gas boilers

ProDave

user1977 said:

ProDave said:

Well it now seems the SNP's plan it the owner must pay for all the work, if they are to be able to sell their house, and there is only talk of very small grants that might cover a tiny percentage of the work needed.

There's "only talk" of the policy coming into force at all, I'm not sure why people are assuming it would be enacted in a completely impractical way.

I'm not even sure whether it's feasible for e.g. many listed buildings to be improved sufficiently to make the grade.

Valid point.  It is just possible that some completely outrageous fictitious policy has been leaked to the press to gauge the amount of sheer horror at the proposals in order to determine how for to go when they publish the real proposals.  But I would not trust any party that can even think about something like this even if just put out there as a feeler for public opinion.

Or a case of propose something really harsh, then people are more likely to accept the slightly harsh real policy later on and think "phew not as bad as I feared"

If so that is no way to play politics. 

MeteredOut

I've not even read the article but can 100% guarantee its click-bait, probably some passing report by a think-tank that as per standard process, has to be reviewed by policy makers.

There's no way this will happen in the next 10 years. It'd be political suicide for the SNP.

oldernonethewiser

MeteredOut said:

I've not even read the article but can 100% guarantee its click-bait, probably some passing report by a think-tank that as per standard process, has to be reviewed by policy makers.

There's no way this will happen in the next 10 years. It'd be political suicide for the SNP.

It is not their proposal though so it can be blamed on the Greens when it all goes pear-shaped.

See the recent DRS scheme for an example.

ComicGeek

MeteredOut said:

I've not even read the article but can 100% guarantee its click-bait, probably some passing report by a think-tank that as per standard process, has to be reviewed by policy makers.

There's no way this will happen in the next 10 years. It'd be political suicide for the SNP.

And absolutely no way linked to the Tory government announcements in the last couple of days promoting their 'practical' adjustments to climate change policies to not put additional costs on house owners - in strong contrast to the supposed SNP 'policy'.

Isn't it great that the government cares about us all etc etc

[Deleted User]

Given its the SNP there will probably be a lot of help available to most people to upgrade.

The only people who will end up paying out will be landlords and the very well off.

_Penny_Dreadful

The Scottish government is currently run by a SNP/Green coalition.  This sounds like a potential Green party policy which is only at this point in time being considered and despite the provative headline doesn't necessarily mean that homes with gas boilers won't meet the EPC C requirement because no one knows what that might look like.

The Westminster government has already introduced a ban on new buildings being installed with gas boilers from 2025 with a proposed ban on the sale of gas boilers by 2035, although they might do a u-turn on that.  Whilst I agree that we do need to move away from our dependency on fossil fuel, and I say that as someone who works in oil & gas, most governments don't seem to have an effing clue about how to transition to renewable energy.

Mabel2012

Last night's BBC programme on heat pumps showed a heat pump installation in a bungalow taking 6 days at a cost of £18,000. That included replacing the old radiators. The equipment was huge with pipes going over the garage and into the loft. I was left feeling that a heat pump would not fit in many London flats, even if the price was right. I have a gas combi central heating system and use a Hive thermostat to control the timings and temperature. I didn't get the impression the heat pump system was controllable.

Will we turn into Cubans, patching our old cars and boilers so they last forever.

ProDave

I have said before, heat pumps work very well indeed in new houses with good insulation and particularly with under floor heating.  There really is no excuse why all new builds could not be built that way and heated with a heat pump.

As that BBC program showed, many, if not most of the UK's old housing stock will need a LOT of work to upgrade them for a heat pump.  This has not been thought through.  Who wants to pay £18,000 reduced perhaps to £13,000 by the BUS grant to change their entire heating system to suit a heat pump?  And the "benefit" to them, is the same heating bills as they had with their gas boiler.

Robbo66

the biggest problem with this is that older houses cannot be retro fitted with heat pumps and energy recovery system to make them work as efficiently as a gas boiler, designing and building a house from the ground up around this technology works well. 

MultiFuelBurner

The main problem is the difference in price between electricity and gas.

If this factor of 3-4x is changed that's when it all starts to become economically viable and even retrofits have a payback timescale.