Martyn Cooper, commercial manager at the UK’s Federation of Environmental Trade Associations, which represents heating and cooling companies, including the heat-pump industry, said: “The bottom line is there wouldn’t be enough f-gases to service existing equipment in the market, be they heat pumps or not.
“It would potentially impact on the rollout of heat pumps because there wouldn’t be enough f-gases to go in them now.
“Potentially you have one environmental regulation, f-gas regulation, impinging on the move to net zero.
“The UK government’s target is 600,000 heat pumps installed by 2030.
“There are other factors that affect the heat-pump market, one of which is the need for more trained engineers to install.
“But that aside, you’d still potentially not have enough heat pumps available to meet the government’s net zero targets.”
Earlier this year, the European Heat Pump Federation warned that the proposed stricter limits would “necessarily slow down the speed at which heat-pump equipment will be deployed”.
Really? They’re banning the very gas that makes heat pumps work? At the same time as we’ve all got to have heat pumps?
When are you going to get it, the aim is not to replace todays standard of living with a zero-carbon version, its to impoverish the entire West inside a few decades? That all the ludicrous inefficiencies and inconsistencies of State energy policy are a feature not a bug? They don’t want the masses having free access to energy, and all the strands of Western energy policy are designed to make sure they won’t be able to in the future.
Who are you suggesting are “they”, Jim? Because, it seems to me that if “they” were to try and enact such a scheme then someone will stand on a ticket opposing them and get elected.
I thought they were using non-fluorinated hydrocarbons for refrigeration now — am I wrong? Things like propane or something. Mind you, I wouldn’t care to have circuits pumping high-pressure propane around every living space. Isn’t that what ignited Grenfell? And that was just a fridge.
But finally banning fluorocarbons will probably mean replacing existing installations. I expect trying to retrofit for a gas with completely different properties would do wonders for efficiency.
@Jim
Like I’ve said in other posts, it’s a fruitless task looking for conspiracies because conspiracies require altruism. A rare animal to be spotted in the wild.
Look for incentives affecting individuals making individual decisions. The individuals who made this decision were incentivised to do so. Who provided the incentives & why?
The whole of modern governance is the result of individuals seeking to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage.
My heat pump uses R32 as its refrigerant, which I gather is common for the newer ones. It’s got a far lower GWP than the older refrigerant gases.
The big problem with the government plans for rolling out heat pumps is that they’ve got a stupidly short time scale, just like all their other screwed up initiatives. The result is not enough trained people, not enough supplies, and the only ones making money are the cowboys and con men.
HHG and BiS: Klaus, and his acolytes educated by the WEF…..
And if a whole host of individuals have been convinced that doing X (Net Zero, Green New Deal, Great Reset, Build Back Better, man made global warming, reducing the world population to 800 million) will maximise their personal advantage it is still a conspiracy (from the Latin: breathe together). They may not be gathered together in a lair under a volcano (Davos?) but the outcome is the same.
Roger, the heating engineer and builder on the subject of heat pumps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhAKMAcmJFg
At the time (the video is a little over a year old) they were 3 times more expensive than gas. How to make them ‘competitive’ I wonder?….Triple the price of gas. Which has now been achieved. Funny how that happens isn’t it…..
Jim – yes.
Original EU plans meant cutting the quota allowed for industry down to just under a third of 2015 levels by 2024, and to just over 20 per cent by 2030.
But the EU has announced new proposals to cut it down to just five per cent of 2015 levels by 2030, a stricter schedule that the UK may follow and that could stunt the rollout of heat pumps, a central part of net zero plans.
They know there’s an energy crisis (of their own creation). They know people are under massive pressure from rising mortgage, fuel and food costs. They know economies were already reeling from lockdowns and money printing. Like the sabotage of Dutch agriculture, this is deliberate.
HHG – it seems to me that if “they” were to try and enact such a scheme then someone will stand on a ticket opposing them and get elected.
I’m sure such a person will get a fair hearing from the MSM and definitely not find themselves quickly banned from the internet by Big Tech, blacklisted from fundraising by payment processors, and given the run around by the deep state while far-left thugs harass them on the street with impunity.
Mibbe our Prester John candidate can wear a snazzy yellow vest.
The link “HFCs” (below) in the Telegraph article takes you to a cracking piece, written in 2016 by Christopher Booker. Well worth a look.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/15/huffing-and-puffing-over-hfcs-wont-cut-global-warming/
BiS – conspiracies require altruism
Narp, they just require common purpose and a grown up understanding that they shouldn’t say the quiet parts out loud in public.
Conspiracies are actually the default mode of human cooperation. Adam Smith warned us about people of the same trade, but there’s countless other major and minor examples in ancient and recent history from the murder of Julius Caesar to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to the American Revolution to the Glorious Revolution to the defenestration of Boris Johnson…
“it seems to me that if “they” were to try and enact such a scheme then someone will stand on a ticket opposing them and get elected.”
Trump, Orban, Putin, Xi would appear to be making exactly that opposing position. Or in Trump’s case, were. Orban’s next.
Opposing the Net Zero death cult has terminal consequences.
Tongue firmly in cheek, but note who isn’t bought into the whole Gaia worship delusion.
From MJW’s link to Booker: “But CFCs have been widely replaced by hydrofluorocrabons (HFCs), used in refrigeration and air-conditioning”. My memory is not the best but I’ll swear that someone once explained to me that the replacement wasn’t driven by science, or at least not by good science, but by the opportunity to make a buck.
His account was rather like accounts you read about the replacement of incandescent light bulbs by those (now obsolete?) fluorescent bulbs. That latter was apparently a splendidly corrupt wheeze pushed by Philips – the Dutch electrical company not the US oil company.
P.S. We have just inherited a copious supply of fluorescents – what should we do with them?
Very illuminating, dearieme.
@ dearieme:
“In 1978 the United States banned the use of CFCs such as Freon in aerosol cans, the beginning of a long series of regulatory actions against their use. The critical DuPont manufacturing patent for Freon (“Process for Fluorinating Halohydrocarbons”, U.S. Patent #3258500) was set to expire in 1979. In conjunction with other industrial peers DuPont formed a lobbying group, the “Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy,” to combat regulations of ozone-depleting compounds.[26] In 1986 DuPont, with new patents in hand, reversed its previous stance and publicly condemned CFCs.[27] DuPont representatives appeared before the Montreal Protocol urging that CFCs be banned worldwide and stated that their new HCFCs would meet the worldwide demand for refrigerants.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon
In other words, the patents on CFCs had expired, which would have resulted in cheap refrigeration for the world. Hence the move to support the ban on them, once new, expensive patents for HCFCs were in place.
@ Arthur Teacake
HFCs are fluorinated, just less F than CFCs. So banning F will still make it more difficult/less efficient to run refrigerators or “Heat Pumps” which are refrigerators running in reverse gear.
So the actual (as distinct from claimed) efficiency of heat pumps will be (even) lower.
The whole of modern governance is the result of individuals seeking to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage.
BiS, you’re getting a bit hung up on this selfish gene notion. Yes, we are all self-interested individuals but that operates primarily at a subconscious level, not a moustache twirling, white-cat-on-lap intellectual level. We are a massively social species; socially cooperative and socially competitive, with status and tribalism being major motivators. Conspiracies really do happen (or so I read on the internet).
Look for incentives affecting individuals making individual decisions. The individuals who made this decision were incentivised to do so. Who provided the incentives & why?
There, you see, you’re couching individualism in conspiratorial terms.
Having said that, this whole Klaus Schwab, WEF and 800 million thing seems too absurd to me, like something out of a mediocre Get Smart episode. It’s almost as if it’s been put forward to discredit conspiracy theories; to draw attention from the real conspiracy. And my money on that is the old crew that has already marched through our institutions – the fucking Marxists. They haven’t stopped marching, haven’t stopped undermining, haven’t stopped being evil and stupid.
Dearieme
I have told this story a few times. It is a bit of a hobby horse of mine and changed my mind about Brexit : from just wanting a clear break to the deployment of cruise missiles instead. There was an investigation by the Austrian magazine “profil” into the banning of incandescents which gave chapter and verse. This was about a dozen or so years ago.
Basically GE, Philips and Siemens ( Osram ) were complaining about being undercut by China dumping bulbs on the European market. Their complaints to the EU fell on deaf ears, so instead they formed a cartel and jointly hired Green lobbyists to persuade the EU to ban these bulbs and mandate their replacement with poor quality and hazardous flourescents, for which these crooks still held the licences.
A good example of the general idiocy and corruption of the last Labour government was that the moron Hilary Benn gold plated the directive and then stood up in Parliament and told everybody that it was his idea and didn’t mention that it was an order from the EU.
ps It is not a conspiracy theory , the CEO of GE admitted it, but by then it was too late, suckers.
Also, it was a concerted worldwide effort. I believe that they pulled the same trick in Australia, but the EU hit job is better documented.
Propane, iso-butane and ammonia are all non fluoridated natural refrigerants that “could” be used in heat pumps. All three are widely available and much cheaper than F-gases. Obviously they don’t work as well which is why the industry largely chooses to avoid them.
Ammonia was of course used in the early days of refrigerated transport. This was turn of the 20th Cent for ships bringing meat toUK from Argentina. Derived from guano, I believe.
Until the great depression and before the Fascists came along and turned it into a basket case in the 1930s and 40s, Argentina was a prosperous state basically run by British companies.
Thanks P,S & Ok. So there are perfectly effective conspiracies that are now no secret. Unsurprising.
Obviously they don’t work as well which is why the industry largely chooses to avoid them.
Ammonia is still used as a refrigerant in cold stores, as evidenced by the mandatory wind sock in case of leakage.
In reply to various comments.
Sure, people conspire together. Because their personal interests coincide. But they are conspiring to further personal interests.
And it least gets one away from New World Order & all the other nutty conspiracy theories.
The supposed people with the power to do this shit have gained the power by a lifetime of correctly perceiving their own personal interests. There main interest, nearing the end of their lives, is hanging on to it & what it has gained them. Not changing a world they won’t live to see.
It’s worth looking down the greasy pole at those on the climb. That’s where a lot of this shit gets hatched. People looking to leverage their way up making common cause with others like them. They are the ones who want change because change brings opportunities.
Dearime, there was a rumour that it was to do with Dupont’s patent expiring on one (some, all?) CFC’s.
The science demonising CFC’s for destroying the ozone layer was made up to implement the Montreal protocol as a test run for the net zero bollocks (allegedly).
@PJF
There, you see, you’re couching individualism in conspiratorial terms.
Hardly. There’s personal interest at all levels.
The individuals who made this decision were incentivised to do so. Who provided the incentives & why?
Why did they provide those particular incentives? Whose interests were they favouring?
Yeah Otto. At least the only ‘bulbs’ I can find in the supermarket are those damn spiral fluorescents.
I’ve still got a few incandescents around the house that haven’t burnt out yet. Unlike a good Green, I can’t be bothered to chuck away something that’s working to my satisfaction.
I hate the fluorescents with a vengeance, they are really crap. I have replaced most of my lights with LEDs, but have kept the old incandescent bulbs in a box. Those I haven’t replaced tend to be rarely used, like in a spare room, sex dungeon etc
I’m sure such a person will get a fair hearing from the MSM and definitely not find themselves quickly banned from the internet by Big Tech, blacklisted from fundraising by payment processors, and given the run around by the deep state while far-left thugs harass them on the street with impunity.
Of course, hadn’t thought of that. You would think I would have, after the same thing twarted our attempt to leave the EU.
Hail to the all powerful “they” that we are powerless to stop with their plans to enslave us and silence our voices. All we can do is openly discuss them on the internet with impunity.
HHG, it’s obvious the evil plans won’t work. The problem is all the pain and discomfort we will have to endure before the Gods of the Copybook Headings sort it all out. Note, it will not be stopped by democracy or revolution, but by reality.
BiS:”It’s worth looking down the greasy pole at those on the climb. That’s where a lot of this shit gets hatched. People looking to leverage their way up making common cause with others like them. They are the ones who want change because change brings opportunities.”
Precisely. What gets you on to the Golden Escalator of well paid sinecures at the top tables of everything? Not rocking the boat. You spout the same shit that those in power do, because thats what gets you on. If you are in that Golden Circle, whereby you have a very well paid job doing something Very Important, which if by bad luck or your own incompetence you are forced to leave, you get invited right in to another extremely well remunerated position as if nothing had happened. Think Paula Vennells or Nick Clegg. But if you dare to do off piste you get thrown into outer darkness. No Chancellorships, Directorships or Quango CEO jobs for you! And even on a personal level you will be dropped like a stone from all the invites to social events, and people you thought were friends will ignore your calls. You will become a no-one, an outcast. There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy if everyone has the same incentive – believe (or just publicly espouse) this to make your life easy.
HHG:”Of course, hadn’t thought of that. You would think I would have, after the same thing twarted our attempt to leave the EU.”
Brexit was the Establishments own error. It never thought it had to go full bore on Farage et al, because they never thought they would lose. They’d drunk their own cool-aid and believed the polling that predicted an easy remain win. Then suddenly millions of previous non-voters turned up at the polls and voted for Brexit. I mean it even threw Farage, he was shocked he’d won, so think how the Establishment felt. They won’t make the same mistake again. Trump shows that. There was nothing Trump was going to do that the next Establishment place holder of the US Presidency couldn’t undo in a trice, yet they had to destroy him, because he’d won under their radar so to speak. And maybe they have destroyed him. If he runs again they will move heaven and earth to ensure he can’t win, whatever it takes. Assassination if necessary.
If someone runs at the next UK election on an anti-Net Zero ticket, in a serious manner, ie national campaign, candidates everywhere, you watch the Establishment reaction. Every gun will be trained on him or her. State bodies, the house trained media, Big Tech, all will be aimed at discrediting and destroying any even slight chance they have of getting even minimal traction with the voters.
Brexit was the Establishments own error. It never thought it had to go full bore on Farage et al,
It’s a shame you were clearly on the moon during the Brexit referendum, where we were blamed for everything from super gonorrhea to the execution of Jo Cox, otherwise we could have a sensible debate about this.
I know it’s tough for life’s losers like you and Steve, and it’s much easier to blame it all on the coming of the lizard transexual bogeyman or something, but I’m afraid back here in the real world, there are important things that need debunking and you paranoid failures aren’t helping.
Because ammonia is poisonous, Thomas Midgley Jr invented CFCs to replace them, to atone for inventing leaded pentrol when it became obvious it was poisoning people – including himself when he demonstrated its “safety” by dipping his hand in some.
Sure, people conspire together. Because their personal interests coincide. But they are conspiring to further personal interests. And it least gets one away from New World Order & all the other nutty conspiracy theories.
It’s amazing that people can’t see there is an attempt to remake the world order when there are people openly saying we are remaking the world order. It’s not a ‘nutty conspiracy theory’ if they’re telling you they’re conspiring to do it.
I (very) briefly worked at a large gas import terminal. They had some gargantuan engine/compressor sets to run chillers used to get the moisture out of “Raw” gas, and these used Propane as the refrigerant. At the time, I don’t think efficiency was high on the list of operating considerations, and Propane was cheap and readily available…
“Triple the price of gas”
Which is [still] used to generate the majority of our electricity – the very same electricity needed to run those damn heat pumps…
“It’s a shame you were clearly on the moon during the Brexit referendum, where we were blamed for everything from super gonorrhea to the execution of Jo Cox, otherwise we could have a sensible debate about this.”
There was Project Fear during the referendum campaign, of course there was, as you rightly say Brexit was blamed for everything from A to Z at some point. Thats not what I’m talking about. Thats within the margin of error for legitimate campaigning. Both sides used hyperbole, and marginally truthful slogans etc (remember £300m/day for the NHS?). But there was no real nasty stuff beyond that. The players on both sides were mainstream pols and were granted the space to campaign normally, apart from Farage who one notes did get some of the storm trooper treatment. And afterwards also remember how the Leave campaigns were done over properly by the Electoral Commission? Hauled over the coals repeatedly for things that ultimately proved to be either untrue, or were so minor as to be worth nothing more than a stiff letter. Whereas the Remain camps were given the whitewash treatment.
The latter behaviour what an anti-Net Zero campaign would get more of in spades. More of the stormtrooper behaviour, all events and campaigning would be made impossible by the threat (implied or actual) of violence from the likes of XR and the usual rent-a-mob crowd. Indeed I suspect the police would then close down Anti-Net Zero events because of the threat of violence. The apparatus of the State would be used to disrupt campaigning and threaten individuals. Candidates would get sudden tax inspections, their businesses would have all manner of regulatory inspections, constant complaints would be made to the police about hate speech, which of course they would investigate fully (in the full glare of the MSM naturally). There would be baseless claims of Russian (or Big Oil) control of the party/campaign. Every underhand (and probably illegal) trick would be used to discredit the individuals behind such a campaign, and thus the campaign itself.
I really don’t know what rock you’ve been living under for the last 5 or 6 years if you think that a grassroots campaign to throw out one of the bedrock policies of just about every Western State would be allowed a free shot at democratic power. Everything we have seen from Trump to Covid to how Tommy Robinson has been treated shows that Western States are not going to give up their power to mere voters any time soon.
“I know it’s tough for life’s losers like you and Steve, and it’s much easier to blame it all on the coming of the lizard transexual bogeyman or something, but I’m afraid back here in the real world, there are important things that need debunking and you paranoid failures aren’t helping.”
WTF are you talking about? What exactly that I have said needs ‘debunking’? All the tactics that I have laid out that would be thrown at an Anti-Net Zero campaign have all been used before, maybe not all in the UK, but they are all well documented. From Obama using the IRS in the US to investigate his opponents, to the likes of BLM, XR and Antifa providing fascist bully boy tactics against anyone considered beyond the pale, to the use of State bodies to punish the Brexit campaigners after they had won, to the lies about Trump and Russia, and about Brexit and Russia, to the closing down of so called right wing speakers at universities by threatening violence which allows the police to demand the event be closed because of the threat to ‘public order’ , to Big Tech interfering in election campaigns in utterly blatant ways (the Hunter Biden laptop affair), to the use (in the USA) of swatting to try and intimidate people. Its all documented facts. Where are these lizard people of which you speak?
Harry Haddock’s Ghost is a useful idiot. Better off not feeding the trolls, Jim.
@Jim, August 8, 2022 at 5:30 pm
Excellent post
It hasn’t ended:
UK & USA Establishment Witch Hunts
There are many gasses that can be used in heat pumps – all have different pros and cons. There may be differences in performance (efficiency), but as long as the system is designed for it (suction and head pressures appropriate to required operating temperatures), any of them can be used.
Combustible gasses (from memory, refrigerant grade butane is R600, propane is R290) aren’t really a problem as the amount used in a heat pump unit is very small and it’s sited outside. Contrary to what many might be worried about, the gas never comes into your home – only water that’s been heated by the heat pump.
So if there is a shortage of HCFC etc, there’s no shortage of alternatives. As long as seals are suitable and perhaps the oil changed, hydrocarbons can also be retrofitted to older systems expecting R12, R22, R134a, etc.