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The UK has more than its fair share of looming infrastructure priorities.
There’s a neglected water network that leaks sewage into rivers and clean water into the ground. A rail system in disarray after the last-minute scrapping of HS2. Not to mention roads filled with enough potholes to swallow fleets of electric cars there aren’t enough charging points to run.
All are addressed in the second five-yearly review of the UK’s key strategic priorities by the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC).
But the main priority, it concludes, is to electrify the heating of the UK’s 29 million or so homes.
As Sir John Armitt, chair of the NIC told me with a smile: “It’s literally all hands to the pumps, in this case the heat pumps!”
The main reason, according to the NIC, is one of urgency.
We have just about run out of time to switch away from gas before we miss legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions by 2035.
But there’s also the economic opportunity in that heat pumps promise to reduce heating bills almost immediately, and halve them by the time we get to 2050 (the NIC forecasts).
Then there’s the added bonus of not being dependent on gas.
That doesn’t just avoid climate risks, but also the ridiculous price volatility of gas which, but one estimate, cost the UK economy £50-60bn extra between early 2022 and early 2023.
For infrastructure folks heat pumps are exciting.
Because they just move heat from one place (typically the air outside your home) and concentrate it in another (your radiator/hot water tank) they’re 3-5 times more efficient than a gas boiler. And when powered by wind, solar or nuclear power, they have negligible carbon emissions too.
The challenge is cost.
Read more:
UK installs record number of heat pumps and solar panels
Rollout of £150m heat pump scheme branded ’embarrassing’
For the time being at least they are on average…
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