Ministers are set to impose heat pump targets next year in a move that will lead to a “boiler tax” on households, industry sources have said.
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, is expected to introduce the policy from April, despite warnings that it will drive up the cost of a new boiler.
Under the plans, boiler makers would be hit with hefty fines if they fail to achieve targets on the number of heat pumps they have to sell every year. Manufacturers have warned that it would force them to add up to £180 to the price of a boiler, although campaigners have accused them of profiteering.
We will fine you if you do not sell enough of X. Or, more accurately, if the propostion of X and Y that you sell is not to our liking. The mindset is obviously that manufacturers determine what it is that consumers buy. Which is not, in fact, the case at all. It’s a very lefty view of the world, we’re all just pawns in the hands of suppliers. But that is what they’re running with. Fines for the wrong proportions.
Same on EVs. Just a weird logical construction.
Ford (USA) sold 10,000 EV’s in the first quarter of 2024. They lost $130,000 on each one.
Stellantis (GM etc) have announced job losses in USA.
VW have announced plans to close factories in Germany for the first time in their 87 year history.
At some point, our betters will realise their plans and reality are not compatible. Of course they will make it sound as if they were right all along and it’s simply their plan ‘evolving’ or some such tripe, but it will have cost thousands of jobs (I know, jobs are a cost right, so that’s a good thing then……..) and billions of pounds of our money.
I suppose these fools hope that the boiler makers will price themselves out of the market after passing the fines into the customers.
I can’t see why they don’t just ban gas boilers outright from tiday. That is the policy after all.
Probably a silly question, but how many MPs have ever built a product, and sold it in a free market?
Failed In Scotland: Try In England – Coerce Using Force.
Government directing what private businesses must trade. Sure there’s a word for that. Seven letters, starts with ‘f’, doesn’t rhyme with “examine”.
What if a boiler maker doesn’t know how to make heat pumps? They are completely different technologies.
Jim in the anti podes @ 6.49, if the number is around about the same as those MP’s who had science degrees in the last parliament is anything to go by, perhaps half a dozen.
The vast majority of our MP’s are drones with degrees, in such vital subjects for governing a country as:
Politics = 20%
History = 13%
Law = 12%
Economics = 10%
Philosophy = 6%
English = 4%.
So a max. of 20 with a STEM degree.
The vast majority of these cunts have never left school or had a proper job (and ‘Union organiser’ / Party activist etc. doesn’t count).
We will fine you if you do not sell enough of X. Or, more accurately, if the propostion [sic] of X and Y that you sell is not to our liking. The mindset is obviously that manufacturers determine what it is that consumers buy…
The mindset is socialism. The private sector dupes the population into buying bad things, but we socialists know your real interests and what is best for you…
‘It’s a very lefty view of the world’
Indeed. Am I correct in thinking that this was first introduced by ‘Blue Labour’ sometime before the last election?
It’s quite appropriate that politicians know bugger all about STEM subjects, which deal with reality. Politics is solely about getting people to do what YOU want them to do. Which is why so many have studied law. As TTK has displayed his training at becoming a prolific liar while sounding sincere has been very successful.
His major problem is that daddy was so busy making a tool and mummy was so busy moulding the NHS into the envy of the world they forgot to get his adenoids done…
The fact that he looks like Max Headroom after clumsy surgery is just God’s sense of humour.
it will have cost thousands of jobs (I know, jobs are a cost right, so that’s a good thing then……..) and billions of pounds of our money.
The net zero madness has already cost that, just in the UK. The final cost (if we are lucky enough to have such a thing) will be trillions.
As for boilers, far better to pay an extra £180 rather than fork out for a heat pump.
More Net Zero madness; the EPC for a rental property I own recommends £15-35k of improvements to get it from a D to a C, in order to save an estimated £250 a year in gas and electricity costs.
It’s probaby illegal anyway, under EU and GATT trade laws.
But a good way to drive all boiler manufacturing overseas. Try collecting your boiler fines from the China manufacturer!
Go after the importer? Send a bill to Shoebox 1587 Ltd. ? So sorry, this address is now Shoebox 1588 Ltd.
But it will be funny when the Gov. starts prosecuting boilerleggers.
Oh, and since official Corgi registered gas fitters will be closely monitored, the blackmarket boiler replacement cowboy business will be booming!
Milliband seems to be relishing the role of fall guy. Do you think he hasn’t worked it out? We should call him “Energy Supremo” a la Yes Minister.
Tuttle
I beg to differ, Tim. As with EVs and “green energy”, if the pols force it on people outright they’ll get blowback. OTOH, if they subsidize their preferred product and inflate the price of the “wrong” one they’ll get some people to switch to the virtuous product and any anger is at the greedy bastards charging too much for a gas auto or boiler. The gov’ts role in it is missed all too often – the price stickers don’t point this out.
For the pols the main problem is the drag on the economy from these types of moves, and, of course, the fact that prices of all kinds of products increase. Those cause political discontent, but they’re less obvious than mandates or bans. Hell, some part of the electorate will even take this to show that we aren’t going leftward enough, you know, letting those greedy bastards charge so much.
If the government is so keen to stop us using gas, why, everywhere I go, there are holes in the road, Cadent and British Gas vans/trucks, and piles of yellow pipes? The new housing estate being built not far from me had a gas takeoff point from the high pressure main running under the site constructed as one of the first operations. Not just where I live in East Anglia either. In Stevenage, where my daughter lives, they’ve just built a new gas distribution point nearby.
Surely they don’t think this stuff will actually work with hydrogen? Surely they don’t think we can migrate to hydrogen either? No doubt millibrain thinks we can but he’s not a physicist.
The Clean Heat Market Mechanism (CHMM) would set a number of heat pumps they must sell as a percentage of their overall boiler sales. It was initially drawn up by the Tories and had been set to come into force earlier this year before being shelved following a backlash.
Tories should be put in a sack and drowned. (A weighted sack, because shite floats.)
Under the Tory plans inherited by Mr Miliband, manufacturers would have to make sure that at least six per cent of their overall sales were made up of heat pumps. They would be fined £3,000 for every missed sale, with companies warning they would have to pass the cost of multi-million pound penalties on to customers.
If this seems punitive, remember Ed Miliband’s Dad had a lifelong dream that you be worked to death in a gulag.
Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “The boiler tax was a self-imposed price increase brought in by boiler manufacturers to lobby against heat pump policy so they can keep selling gas boilers for longer.
“Unless the UK starts to transition away from gas boilers, we will have to import more gas from abroad as the North Sea output continues its inevitable decline, so this is a matter of energy security.”
Jess Ralston summarises the “stupid bitch” perspective on whether or not you’ll be allowed indoor heating.
Another childishly unrealistic take from a non-contributing useless eater:
Andy Manning, the head of energy systems transformation at Citizens Advice, added: “Boiler manufacturers must not raise their prices again in response to a scheme that would help homes across the country move to clean energy. Instead, they should focus on meeting the requirements of the scheme.
The British government has made itself an enemy of the indigenous British population, but they’re also an enemy of reality:
Fewer than 37,000 certified heat pump installations were recorded last year, significantly short of the 90,000 that would be required to meet a six per cent target.
Politics in the United Kingdom is now about sniggering, foreign-owned politicians competing to bring your standard of living down to “cold Africa” levels.
They should be elevated above the people.
Don’t understand
Gas boilers are still going to be stupendously cheaper than the £30k plus cost of installing heat pumps in the average UK home once you add in reworking the plumbing, work in way etc
£180 on a £3kish boiler installation?
Of course UK based boiler manufacturers may just move their production abroad
This approach wrt EVs is already killing motor manufacturers
We have a heat pump , part of our Fujitsu ducted system . I guess this is not the same idea that you have in the UK? Recently replaced the old unit , no boilers or anything, just a standard 415 v unit, select temperature desired, press a button and it automatically produces the result. Sorry to confuse, it’s just a standard Australian home aircon.
Adolf………much the same here, from memory about 75% of our pollies are former lawyers or Union staffers. Leader of the Opposition is a former Detective, and an Opposition Mp is ex SAS, so there is that.
Tim the Coder: «official Corgi registered gas fitters will be closely monitored»
We had one of those on here years ago who took me to task for not being able to spell “Myson”.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has a degree in Chemical Engineering, his predessor, HuJintao, a Hydraulic Engineer, before Hu was Jiang Ziamin, an Electrical Engineer.
I’m sure Theo will be along soon to tell us that all this would have gone away if we’d only voted for those free market loving Tories………
@LineNoise
Will we need a 27B/6?
Surely they don’t think this stuff will actually work with hydrogen?
Back in the day, it did work with hydrogen. Before the UK went over to natural gas. The process produced gas from coal produced a certain amount of hydrogen in the mix. Of course the incidence of gas explosions was far higher in those days. As were deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning. Also in the mix.
How are the Houses of commons and the Lords heated? We need an example to follow. Just asking for a friend?
Shvatio – How are the Houses of commons and the Lords heated?
Fire, hopefully.
Cleansing fire.
“it did work with hydrogen” Not really: what worked with Town Gas was short lengths of piping designed for Town Gas, not running it through long lines designed for natural gas.
We had one of those on here years ago who took me to task for not being able to spell “Myson”.
Not a problem I ever suffered from. His daughter, Carol, was remarkably tasty. She used to hang around with Sally Bairstowe (estate agents/developers) & the two Ladies McPherson (Britvic). Also tasty.
British companies graded by totty
The analytical skills and curiosity that a minister should possess are not necessarily conferred by a STEM degree, an arts degree or a long list of credentials. After all, the world is chock-a-block with highly qualified mediocrities so it is easier to identify those who should never become MPs, far less ministers.
The Science Minister, Peter Kyle, at the fourth time of asking was accepted by Sussex University, where he studied geography, international development, and environmental studies. According to the linked article he has a reading age of eight.
He hasn’t been on Mastermind yet!
He’s barely even sentient. As his struggle to best a bacon sarnie proved.
“At some point, our betters will realise their plans and reality are not compatible.”
We call this point “too late”. As Tim points out, it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that mandatory sales quotas are idiotic. That idiocy is, as Addolff points out, now making itself apparent in the market. So they’re extending it to boilers.
It’ll be another ten years – minimum – before the policy is abandoned after multiple reschedulings.
Politics is fucking stupid.
Renting out our house, so had to get an EPC done.
Was graded a ‘D’ because we use an air-sourced heat pump (an aircon to you and me, just reversed). Was informed that if we fitted a gas boiler we would be upgraded to a ‘C’.
Governments and joined-up thinking, eh?
Will these same rules apply to boilers sold in Northern Ireland and therefore under “EU” Rules?
If not, maybe a nice bit of arbitrage to be done, shipping containers of boilers back to the UK mainland for “Installation only”, just add the cost of the boiler to the service cost as a call out charge or just plain “spare parts”.
It seems obvious to me that electric cars, heat pump domestic heating & zero carbon electricity generation are mutually incompatible with current tech. So are not going to happen on any feasible timescale. So it’s really only a question of how long the pols can prevaricate. However the cost of the prevarication is going to be eye watering.
Roll on a military coup. It’s your only hope.
Sorry John Galt. The boiler installation has to certified.* So it needs the correct spec & paper trail.
*Of course there’s no reason not to install an uncertified boiler. Do one for you tomorrow. But you can’t tell anyone you’ve got it.
Maybe that’s the way it’ll go. Black boilers & black installers. Works fine for recreational pharmaceuticals, hooky booze & tobacco. The market will always supply if there’s a demand.
Thanks for explaining why the market works, BiS.
“Who fitted the boiler?”
“No idea mate, it was in here when I bought the place. Just need a landlords certificate to say the installation is running okay”.
What ain’t certified?
“Of course the incidence of gas explosions was far higher in those days.”
Wasn’t that what they called V2 attacks ?
@JG
You don’t thing they’ll change the certification parameters to cover that?
@BiS – Plenty of boilers been running for decades since installation without needing to be fixed or even certified if it was subject to lettings regulations.
Even the one in my flat, which was installed in the 1990’s, I bet the agent only has the paperwork since they took over a few years back. I doubt they’d have even those beyond more than a few years. There is no “installation paperwork” because it simply pre-dates the need for it.
Even if they did say that domestic work that isn’t subject to lettings would have to be grandfathered in because the paperwork doesn’t exist or if it does is so patchy as to be meaningless. With houses changing hands every 7 – 12 years (or whatever), it’s quite likely that an old boiler pre-dates the current owner and would be very difficult to prove otherwise.
*unless it was subject to lettings legislation*
– “Who fitted the boiler?”
– “No idea mate, it was in here when I bought the place.”
“Says here you bought the place ten years ago, and this boiler was made within the last three months.”
“Doctor Who fitted the boiler . . . ?”
But the bigger question. Is Doctor Who CORGI registered?
* SAFE registered, I guess nowadays, but not as funny.
Simple way is have the new boiler innards installed in the old Potterton boiler case.
“What do you mean this boilers a bit modern to say it’s 37 years old?”
The debate about the age of the boiler is like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
It’s pointless because no one will give a fuck about following the law when it’s so retarded and the chance of getting caught are practically zero.
We’re becoming a low trust society and paying a black market gas fitter to sort your illicit boiler will become second nature. Fabricating the relevant documentation is the work of seconds.
But the bigger question. Is Doctor Who CORGI registered?
No but K9 is.
Boom Boom !
@John Galt
You don’t think I didn’t think about this? Every boiler has a manufacturer’s product plate. Usually gives the date of manufacture. If it doesn’t, you could get it from the serial number on the plate. How do you think service engineers know which part is needed for a repair?
All they have to do is make any boiler installation after a certain date non-compliant for certification. Want to be clever & manufacture counterfeit boilers? They find one example, they remove that model from the compliant list. Not hard to know if it was counterfeit. Boiler manufacturers don’t make boilers. They just make parts of them. A lot of components will come in from outside suppliers. You could tell by what components were used, when it was made. Why that serial number is important for repairers. Tells you what part you need to repair it.
It’s the same reason a car parts supplier will ask for the VIN number. It may look the same car to you, but the parts change over time. So you could authenticate a VIN number by what parts are actually in the car.
It’s pointless because no one will give a fuck about following the law when it’s so retarded and the chance of getting caught are practically zero.
As discussed. It will do where certification is required. And what percentage of the UK building stock is rented? Or requires certification for other reasons.
And they’re entirely capable of requiring certification as a condition of receiving a gas supply. Think of the jobs that would create!
Theo,
We will fine you if you do not sell enough of X. Or, more accurately, if the propostion [sic] of X and Y that you sell is not to our liking. The mindset is obviously that manufacturers determine what it is that consumers buy…
The mindset is socialism. The private sector dupes the population into buying bad things, but we socialists know your real interests and what is best for you…
Being pendantic, but isn’t the government directing the private sector more akin to fascism than to socialism?
Same bunch of authoritarian scum, just different authoritarian models.
You are entirely right, BiND. The socialist model would be, you’d a permit to buy something. The fascist model is to control the who sells it to you.
But since Theo backs both socialism & fascism…
Surely they don’t think this stuff will actually work with hydrogen? Surely they don’t think we can migrate to hydrogen either? No doubt millibrain thinks we can but he’s not a physicist.
It turns out Ed Miliband’s A-levels were Physics (A), Maths (A), Further Maths (B) and English (A)*. So while he may not be a physicist, he certainly knows enough physics to work out that Net Zero is completely impractical given current known science and technology – not by a factor of 2 (which might conceivably be solved over a decade or so) but by orders of magnitude. So he’s simply a lying cunt (and in his case a twin brother didn’t take the exams for him).
* with which he went off to Oxford to study PPE, a rather odd choice, unless your dad is a Labour eminence gris, and you and your brother have had your names down for safe seats since birth
It turns out Ed Miliband’s A-levels were Physics (A), Maths (A), Further Maths (B) and English (A)*. So while he may not be a physicist, he certainly knows enough physics to work out that Net Zero is completely impractical given current known science and technology – not by a factor of 2 (which might conceivably be solved over a decade or so) but by orders of magnitude. So he’s simply a lying cunt (and in his case a twin brother didn’t take the exams for him).
His father wanted you to die in a gulag, and the rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the ugly tree.
We’re becoming a low trust society
Yarp. The reason none of this is workable is because nobody in power gives a fuck whether you live or die of poverty, starvation and exposure in a ditch. In fact, many of them prefer the latter, because they hate you on a biological level. That’s why they’ll put you in a cage if you say “It’s OK to be White”.
It won’t be OK, things will collapse. Starting with the economy, which is already curling up at the edges.
Another few million Africans should fix everything, mind.
PS – High trust societies and their discontents
The Left declared war on high trust societies in the 60’s. It’s why you’ve been brought up watching TV programmes and films continually denigrating the society we used to have as “oppressive” and “sexist” and “racist”. It’s why you’re encouraged to be ashamed of your ancestors.
It’s why they were so eager for contraception, abortion, divorce and the promotion of sexual degeneracy. These things are like pouring bleach on society’s roots. They knew what they were doing.
The problem with high trust societies is that your trust can be, and has been, weaponised against you. We’re in the Stanford Prison Experiment irl, that’s what British politics is now. We desperately need a prison break.
@Shvatio
How are the Houses of commons and the Lords heated? We need an example to follow
Ministers `demand more heaters for their offices in the Commons´
Westminster sources have told the Mail on Sunday that some Government ministers have been asking for new radiators to be installed to stave off the winter chill despite cutting the winter fuel allowance for millions
Millipede should tell them “Freeze to save the children/planet and fill black hole”