One by one they crumble, the net zero targets that were dreamed up without any regard to their cost and practicality. The latest one to go, it seems
, is the so-called boiler tax – a rule which, from April, was going
to force boiler manufacturers to ensure that at least 4 per cent of their installations were heat pumps. Should they have failed, they would have been
liable to pay a fine of £3,000 for every boiler installation above the target. But the Government has now pulled back, perhaps having realised – to its apparent amazement – that boiler
manufacturers were starting to raise prices in order to cover the fines they knew they would have to pay.
You can set targets all day, but that doesn’t mean they are magically going to be realised. You might hope that setting a target will nudge manufacturers and consumers to veer towards heat pumps, and that that will help to bring down prices, but that is not going to happen if there is something fundamentally wrong with the technology. And
the problem with heat pumps is that for all the public money which has been thrown at them over the past decade
they remain too expensive to install. Moreover, while there seem to be some happy customers there are
far too many homeowners complaining that their homes are lukewarm and that the devices
cost too much to run, too. Heat pump
manufacturers themselves have said that they are not suitable for some homes.
All this may change, of course. The high temperature heat pumps required to heat older, less well-insulated properties will hopefully become more efficient. Someone may well find a way to bring down the cost so that a heat pump becomes the natural choice of anyone looking to replace an oil or gas boiler. No-one would be happier than me were that to happen. But
for the moment it is quite plain that even government grants of £7,500 per installation are insufficient to make heat pumps competitive. To start imposing fines on the heating industry on the grounds that engineers haven’t yet got around that problem is not a smart green policy but simply a way of extracting more tax revenue from homeowners.