Liberal Democrat MP Richard Younger-Ross has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) to support the Reheat Britain campaign for a boiler scrappage scheme. An unlikely coalition of plumbers and builders’ merchants have teamed up with environmentalists to form the Reheat Britain campaign – just about the most brilliant piece of joined up thinking this side of the last Liberal government.
The campaign was started by Mick Williams, who runs a chain of plumbers’ merchants in the South of England. Inspired by the government’s car scrappage scheme, Mick saw that the building and plumbing industries also needed help from a similar scheme. With plumbers and builders largely being small businesses based in the UK, his idea would do much more to help the economy and the environment than the car scheme.
The Boiler Scrappage Scheme makes sense on many different levels. It is a great way of stimulating demand in these tough economic times, saving jobs and creating new ones. From an environmental point of view, every old boilers replaced will help the country meet its carbon reduction targets. Saving households £200 year on their heating bill will help fight fuel poverty.
You can sign Reheat’s petition here http://reheatbritain.org.uk. Martin Horwood MP, LibDem Shadow Environment Minister has already signed the petition along with Green Party and Labour Party politicians. Please get your MP to sign Richard’s EDM.
* David Cox is a Lib Dem councillor in Devon.
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16 Comments
A laudable idea. Just one problem though. Like so many schemes designed to help reduce fuel bills and help the very poorest, this doesn’t. Unfortunately it’s not joined up at all.
You see those who often suffer the most from fuel poverty are not the middle-class homeowners who would be able to take advantage of this scheme but people in buy to let homes, Council properties and Housing Association homes. There, the Council’s squeezed by the Government, the Buy to Let sector which is not concerned so long as they can still fill their houses and Housing Associations rapidly turning into little Rackhamite empires, are either not in a position to or not interested in, such a scheme.
Until this addresses the needs of these tenants, it’s just another middle-class rip-off!
Nice to see you take a well-earned tea break from hassling me on my blog David. Well done. Have a digestive on me.
So has anybody done the maths on whether scrapping a perfectly good boiler a few years early has a higher carbon cost than that saved by a more efficient boiler?
Bear in mind that unlike cars, all new boilers are more efficient anyway, and these incentives are not changing the king of boilers that are sold, merely bringing new purchases forward.
I wonder if some insentive can be given to landlords to replace old boilers under this scheme in partiuclar. If you are a private landlord you have no incentive to improve the energy efficiency in your property as it is the tennant who is picking up the bills.
Great scheme. Needs details to deal with the objections e.g. how old should boiler be, could it be part of Warmfront etc. Well done Richard Younger-Ross
This campaign is getting coverage in the trade press for the heating industry. I hope Richard gets some credit for the EDM.
I feel happier giving a subsidy of a couple of hundred pounds (eg a VAT refund) for boiler replacement, rather than £2000 for someone to buy a new four by four.
Old boilers are around 60% efficient with the latest ones at around 90% efficient. In addition old boilers usually spend more time running when they are not needed because of poor internal controls. Bills should be reduced by about one third.
Landlords can get full and immediate tax relief on energy efficiency measures. The Reheat Britain could be brought into the existing scheme. The Energy Performance Certificates should allow a prospective tenants to compare likely heating costs of properties- if they understand how what to look for.
@Joe – your comment makes no sense – in what world would getting rid of an old inefficient boiler be more costly in a carbon sense than installing one which is newer and more efficient? That attitude displays the real underlying laziness the Lib Dems have on green issues. Even though the Green Party aren’t in parliament and therefore can’t table an EDM it shows the difference in commitment and attitude.
@Jo:
Fair enough, I’m not sure how Joe can argue that scrapping a boiler that, by his own argument, is going to be scrapped one day anyway has a big carbon cost. But, the question remains sensible: What are the numbers involved? And is this the biggest bang that we might get for our buck? ie. Say the scheme achieves an average 10 year advance on the replacement of an old boiler. Could the reduced carbon emissions over those 10 years be said to be worth the money required by the scheme? What other carbon reduction projects could the money be spent on instead?
Skepticism isn’t a weakness.
@Jo I will clarify for you.
Suppose boiler X costs 1000kgC to make, emits 100kgC per year, and lasts 20 years.
A new design of boiler Y comes along, costing 1500kgC to make, emits 70kgC per year and lasts 25 years
This means design X costs 150kgC per year to install and run, and design Y 130kgC per year to install and run. So Y is clearly better overall.
But if you scrap a design X boiler a year before its 20 year life is over then you are not saving 150kgC, just 100kgC, and it is costing 130kgC to use the Y boiler this year. 50kg of embedded carbon is wasted.
Now these are all made up figures, and perhaps the embedded carbon is not very significant. But it is worth asking the question.
It’s a fair point Joe, (and Jo, I would point out this is a concern a Green Party member has voiced to me too). I don’t see that it is beyond the wit of man to design the scheme to target the most inefficient boilers, whilst keeping it relatively simple, inevitably there would be a few inefficient replacements; however as long as overall emissions are cut it makes sense.
Don’t forget the other advantages: saving and creating jobs in small and medium business – circulating money into local economies. Giving in some cases a £200 saving in fuel costs; for some people this winter it will be a choice between heating or eating.
David, I don’t see how anyone choosing between heating and eating can benefit from such a scheme – having to find several hundred pounds for the rest of the cost of a new boiler.
Anyway, supposing early scrappage does bring carbon savings, the next question is how much is saved per pound spent? And how does that compare to the carbon savings if the same pound were spent on windmills or better local buses, etc, etc.
Also most of these subsidies will go to people who would have replaced their boilers anyway. So most of the money spent brings no carbon saving at all, and is a deadweight cost.
@David Cox so you speak on behalf of the greens now do you even though you’ve piled your hate on a green blog?
Joe, a scheme run through local councils could use other grants to top up the subsidy, and so give 100% of the cost to low income households. Hugh has put forward some good suggestions on how boiler scrappage could be linked to other council delivered/run schemes.
“subsidies will go to people who would have replaced their boilers anyway” yes – no boiler has an infinite life; however in my experience people only replace their boilers when they suffer a major breakdown – we could be talking decades. RSLs have no incentive to replace inefficient boilers in social housing earlier than the life of the unit, whilst their tenants are paying the energy cost. Even a modest subsidy would be a big incentive for RSLs to scrap inefficient boilers. Equally private landlords might think the same way, scrap now to save in the future.
Jo, I’ve never claimed to speak for greens or the Greens.
Joe, according to the ‘Energy Saving Trust’ if everyone in the UK with gas central heating installed a high efficiency condensing boiler, we would save enough energy to heat 3.4 million homes for a whole year and save around 13 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide. The householder could also save around a third on their heating bills.
David, that is the sort of statistic that is just annoying. The question is how much does each new boiler save, and by how much does an incentive scheme bring new boiler purchases forwards? And therefore what is the cost per tonne of carbon saved.
Here are my guesstimate figures. An efficient boiler saves 1 tonne CO2 per year. Three quarters of incentive payments will go to boilers that are being replaced anyway, and one quarter will bring replacement forward, by an average of five years. Therefore, a £200 incentive will save on average 1.25 tonnes of CO2, which is £160 per tonne.
This makes for an easy comparison with, say, wind power: £20 per tonne saved.
And while excellent today, condensing boilers are not the last word – it would be a bit tragic to subsidise mass early replacement of boilers, only to find micro-CHP coming on to the market next year, which produces heat just as well, and electricity for free on top.