Taking the carbon out of home heating - Mr Wicks wants evidence
Malcolm Wicks is the Energy Minister. He has called for evidence on the best way to “decarbonise” the way we heat our homes. He is specifically asking for evidence about existing technologies mentioning combined heat and power, renewable heat, heat from waste and district heat.
I shall be responding to his call for evidence in terms that the lowest carbon way forward is solar thermal systems for water and space heating and that the best way to incentivize this will be a long term council tax discount.
I suggest that no one holds their breath for too long while Mr Wicks is making up his mind; we are already stuck with the almost unused LCBP offering of a £400 grant (which costs most households £600 to qualify for), and because hardly anyone uses it we shall be stuck with it for some years to come.
I have plenty of things to do so I have to approach answering this call to evidence with some reluctance. It is not my experience that the Government takes much notice of any evidence offered in these exercises. It is a bit like the consultations which end up gathering dust on shelves while governments and civil service blithely pursue their pre determined agenda. I would love to be proved wrong, but I fear I shall be right.
Answering these calls to evidence it is the sort of thing that I would like to see the solar thermal trade association, the Solar Trade Association doing. The call for evidence has been out for over a week, with a relatively short time scale, but I have not heard anything from the Solar Trade Association about it, which is hugely disappointing.
If there is anything you think I should include please either email me, write to me or leave a comment here. I will collate all the replies and add them in one submission. Specific examples of what you have done, or what you have installed will always be helpful. If Mr Wicks takes notice (and we in the solar thermal business have some compelling evidence) it will be very good for the environment, and good for the consumer.
Filed under: carbon emissions, climate change, energy, global warming, heat, malcolm wicks, microgeneration, solar energy, solar panels, tax | Tagged: consultations, decarbonising heating, energy minister, home heating, incentives, LCBP, low carbon building programme, renewable heat
My experience: Installing solar PV shingles, built in to the roof so virtually invisible and overlooked by 2 houses (nearest 1/2 mile away). Local planning office refused planning permission, refusal eventually rescinded after a great deal of pressure.
So, planning application for activity that has a social benefit - and is supposedly encouraged by one half of Govt.
incures an immediate cost which might be for nothing.
Solar and other micro generation now risk being included as an asset of the house in respect of increasing its apparent value and thus incurring a higher council tax band. Again a financial penalty for installing micro generation
There is still VAT on micro generation. Solar PV we install as a social good, solar thermal is a likelier payback as is wind, but we are still taking a risk for the social good.
The best analogy I can give is in applying additional tax on voluntary carers or those who are cared for.
My view: Ignoring grants, all microgeneration including thermal should be completely removed from any part of the taxation system - for ever, I would include the cost of a planning application as a tax in kind.
We are a solar thermal installation company in the Southwest and In the grand scale of things we are very small fry - but since 2003 we have fitted systems with a total rating of 1,057,560 kWh per annum - the actual heat produced and carbon saved year on year will be difficult, but maybe not impossible, to calculate.
We’ve managed to achieve this despite the Govts. best endeavours to hinder and obstruct us with the farcicle Low Carbon Buildings Programme grant scheme and worse - the Phase Two LCBP, which could and should be described as seriously dodgy.
Currently the LCBP £400 for householders is a complete waste of time - and who pays EST to manage this cockeyed scheme? I think the taxpayer.
Then there’s the incoherent and incomprehensible planning regulations for solar thermal - interpretations of which vary not only between councils - but between desks in the same council office.
Most ordinary people are not prepared to do battle with planners and funders when all they want to do is contribute something to helping the environment. and save themselves some hard earned cash at the same time.
I agree - scrap the grant schemes completely - they only create jobs for the boys (and girls) anyway. If the Govt isstill prepared to offer FREE cavity wall and loft insulation why can’t they do the same for solar thermal. Pound for pound I believe it’s about the cheapest and most effective method of reducing carbon emmissions and saving energy costs. It should be as commonplace as ( dare I say it) double glazing.
If our Govt, were really serious about tackling climate change , which I don’t believe it is, rather than create hurdles for people to stumble across it should be smoothing the path to sustainability.
I like to think of myself as one of those who are both worried and excited by the way the environment is going.
Let me explain, I am worried like everyone else that we are harming the environment all the time and may have caused too much over too long a period of time to put it right in just a few decades.
However, I am excited that these concerns have pushed the obvious solutions to ‘cleaner’ energy to the forefront. Why have we continued to use fosil fuels to heat our water? when the sun has been there for a while!! Why do we continue to pay our Political leaders to argue endlessly on how to replace our current energy sources with something new when we should all consider cutting back a bit first, just because we can have all the lights on in the house should we be allowed to? etc.
Like the other contributors here I think the government should start taking things serioulsy and let householders take things into their own hands more. No one is asking for a magic wand and for the government pay for everything, but just let us off VAT on energy savings systems including Solar PV and thermal and also on new gas boilers and hot water tanks. After all all of these are not luxury items although they are expensive, so no one is likely to go out and buy a new one every 3 years like a car.
I agree the grant system should either be given real money or scrapped. In addition if you do install an energy system an ideal way of promoting the benefit is to reduce the council tax, not a huge amount but enough to make it worthwhile.
Finally, its about time the government opened up the whole energy market to some official controls and standards. The replacement window business is a good exmaple of how an industry grew out of nothing 25 years or so back with no end of ‘cowboys’ ripping people off. Slowly the market has sorted itself out (some still remain of course).
Quite simply I feel that anyone wishing to start up in Solar Thermal for example (as I am presently doing) should show that they are able to supply a high stanard of workmanship e.g. either be or have access to a competent heating engineer, electrician, roofing contractor, have adequate insurances, supply a recognised product with a minimum warrantee of 20 years ( one of the reasons I am choosing Genersys products) and have succesfully installed 3 systems with adequate feedback from those customers.
The reward for being able to do this would be have a standard awarded like a Corgi symbol/badge to show the company is reputable etc.
I could go on as I am passionate about the whole subject matter but needless to say the Government needs to lead the way or move over and let those that want to get on with it!!
i think that you have made some very important points. There are a number of programmes that give soalr qualifications and what we really need ins an open market in thermal solar supported by the government without frameworks so that installers work off a level playing field. This industry is too importnat to be left to the cowboys or those that lobby hardest.
Simon
Your point about carers is spot on. Removal of VAT would help and so would tax credits as they have in Austria which has the largest per capita market in the EU outside Cyrprus where soalr is mandatory.
Viv
Thanks for the feedback; it’s a very good summary of what other soalr companies have been saying to us.
Robert
Robert, I don’t believe that this Government are that worried about the enviroment, they just use the “Green” issue to raise taxes, they do nothing to increase the use of renewable and sustainable technology, as others have said they actually put up barriers.
They know what needs to be done to decarbonise homes, it is done elsewhere in Europe, but it would take Government to change things, the first problem is how houses are built in the UK, even if they are built to current building regulations they lose heat, the UK needs to change its way of thinking and they way we heat our homes, something that will be very difficult to do in the UK, look how many years it took the boiler manufacturers of the UK to realise the benefits of solar, when I first came into contact with Genersys, a boiler from Holland had to be used that was solar compatible, they have all jumped on the bandwagon now, although Genersys were covering this way before the rest of the UK.
The way homes are designed and built has to change if we are to cut our emmissions, houses need to be designed to take advantage of passive solar gains, they need to be air tight, why do we still build houses with cavity walls, why do we dot and tab the walls, these all create heat losses, the envelope of a building needs to be air tight, heat recovery needs to be used, under floor heating supplied from a heavily insulated thermal store so that bot hot water and heating can be supplemented by the solar gains, if we build our houses air tight then the heat input required to heat these homes will be far less, the boiler could be a much smaller output then currently used, a small wood stove in the centre of the house for very cold days, if the house is air tight the heat generated will remain in the house, so energy needed to keep the house warm will be reduced, the technology and materials are already availiable and this is already widely done in Germany.
Robert, Combined Heat Power, or Micro CHP as it is known for domestic properties is still not fully developed for UK homes, heat from waste water such as Low Heat sounds a good idea, any recovery of heat that would otherwise go to waste is a good idea, but I have yet to see one in action, so cannot comment on its performance, the technology is there, it just has not been spread to the masses.
Wood stoves should be used more, it is a carbon neutral fuel and sustainable.
Chris: wood stoves - there will be an enviromental discharge of smoke particulates; do you think our filtering technology is good enough and will people be willing to undertake the maintenance regime?
Loking at how houses are built and adapted is very important but we don’t seem to be building them much better than we used to, do we?
Excellent point made by Chris. I contacted the part of Ashford Borough Council that is responsible for ‘Sustainable’ Ashford - the 30,000 home expansion. I asked them what definition they used for sustainable, they don’t have one!
No one can accuse Ashford of knowing what they are doing when it comes to sustainability!
Simon’s comment (first) is interesting; we penalise people for installing microgeneration, instead of incentivising them!
everyone who installs microgeneration is not only saving pollution and carbon emissions for the general good but they are saving the whole country expensive infrastructure either in its building or in its maintenance.
I think local authorities mean well, but there is no joined up thinking with one department being out of touch with another and no common thread of policy to link their planning objectives with their environemtnal objectives.