Weekend press round-up: Heat pumps ‘worse’ than gas boilers for warming up homes, admits Energy Secretary

In our latest review of sector coverage in the national newspapers, Kwasi Kwarteng discusses the decarbonisation of heat, government backing for ‘blue’ hydrogen is debated and public attitudes towards net zero are dissected. There is also analysis of the most polluted bathing water spots in England.

Heat pumps ‘worse’ than gas boilers for warming up homes, admits Energy Secretary

Boris Johnson’s proposed green alternative to gas heating is inferior to traditional boilers, the Business and Energy Secretary has admitted, as he insisted that heat pumps were not “much worse” than the technology they are designed to replace.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Kwasi Kwarteng conceded that, while gas boilers had been “refined over many years … heat pumps are still in their infancy”.

Fears that the new technology provides significantly less heat in homes than traditional boilers were being “exaggerated”, Mr Kwarteng insisted.

He added: “I don’t think actually heat pumps are that much worse than boilers. All I’m saying is that they could be improved if there was more investment.”

Mr Kwarteng says that providing incentives to firms to invest in the UK production of heat pumps and hydrogen will help the Government meet its target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero, as well as help to “drive economic growth”, create new jobs, and bring down the costs of the technology.

Speaking as the Government finalises its heat and buildings strategy, Mr Kwarteng addressed concerns about the costs of the policy by insisting that ministers would not seek to achieve the target by “writing cheques” alone.

“We’re not going to get to a hydrogen economy just by the Government writing cheques,” he says.

“We’re going to do that by the Government, yes, writing some cheques, if I want to put it crudely, but critically, by attracting private investment.”

Mr Kwarteng warns of a “serious cost of living issue”, as he insists that higher taxes are not inevitable to fund the shift to green technologies, adding: “We’ve got to incentivise economic activity. And you don’t incentivise economic activity, you don’t incentivise investment, you don’t incentivise work, by increasing taxes.”

Mr Kwarteng insists that the costs of new technologies will fall “very quickly” as firms begin to invest in alternatives to gas boilers, stating that consumers could “benefit” in as little as five years.

In remarks that could spark a row with renewables firms, he claims that “the point at which we no longer need to keep subsidising” offshore wind farms, “has almost arrived”.

Mr Johnson has said that he wants 600,000 heat pumps replacing gas boilers every year by 2028. While gas heating can pump 60C water into radiators, the Government’s Climate Change Committee assumes heat pumps will operate at 50C.

Mr Kwarteng admitted that he currently still has a gas boiler, but said he is planning to buy a heat pump.

Different types of green heating solutions will be appropriate for different types of properties, he said.

Mr Johnson has acknowledged that heat pumps are currently unaffordable for many people at “about ten grand a pop”.

Mr Kwarteng said: “I do have … a gas boiler … but I’m in a position where because I earn a certain amount of money, I can afford that transition, and I’m looking to make that transition. But I would be very reluctant to impose things on people who can’t afford to make the transition. We’ve got to make that work for people.”

Read the rest of the article (subscription required) here 

Sunday Telegraph

Carbon from UK’s blue hydrogen bid still to equal 1m petrol cars

Opting for hydrogen that is made using fossil fuels rather than renewable electricity could create up to 8m tonnes of carbon emissions every year by 2050, according to an analysis of government data.

The figures show that the use of fossil-fuel hydrogen, or “blue hydrogen”, would create the same carbon emissions each year that more than a million petrol cars would produce, compared with using zero-carbon “green hydrogen”.

Ministers plan to use both blue and green hydrogen to replace fossil gas in factories, refineries and heating, but new figures show that an over-reliance on blue hydrogen would still lead to millions of tonnes of carbon emissions entering the atmosphere every year.

Blue hydrogen is extracted from fossil gas in a process that requires carbon capture technology to trap emissions – but this method still fails to capture between 5% and 15% of the CO2. Carbon emissions are also released when the fossil gas is extracted from oil and gas fields.

Using blue hydrogen exclusively to replace fossil gas would result in between 6m and 8m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year from the late 2020s, or the equivalent of running an average of 1.5m more fossil-fuel cars on the road every year by 2050.

If the government used zero-carbon green hydrogen to meet a third of the UK’s forecast hydrogen demand, blue hydrogen would create the same emissions as around 1m cars running on the UK’s roads each year.

The analysis, undertaken on behalf of the Guardian by Friends of the Earth Scotland, was based on government data published last week in a long-awaited report on the future of the UK’s hydrogen economy.

The strategy sets out a “twin track” approach to supporting hydrogen production, but it failed to suggest a balance between blue and green hydrogen. This has raised concerns among climate groups that an over-reliance on blue hydrogen could lock the UK into decades of North Sea gas production, fossil-fuel imports and millions of tonnes of carbon emissions.

Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said the government’s support for the major oil companies behind plans for blue hydrogen projects, including BP and the Norwegian state oil giant Equinor, would allow them to “prolong fossil-fuel production indefinitely”.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which reviewed the analysis, said investing in both green and blue hydrogen would “allow us to kickstart an entire industry from scratch that creates tens of thousands of jobs and unlocks billions of pounds worth of private investment”.

“Achieving the scale we need would be more challenging if we just used green hydrogen,” the spokesperson added.

The government’s official climate advisers at the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) have backed the idea of a “blue hydrogen bridge” through the 2030s for areas of the UK economy which would struggle to run on electricity, while the UK uses its renewable electricity to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles and heating.

But David Joffe, the head of carbon budgets at the CCC, warned that the government must begin to rein in the proportion of hydrogen produced from fossil fuels in favour of green hydrogen by the late 2030s to meet its legally binding climate targets.

“Blue hydrogen is not an amazing solution, and we don’t embrace it unreservedly,” he told the Guardian.

But relying on blue hydrogen in the short term, while the UK builds its green hydrogen capabilities, would still play an important role to help prevent millions of tonnes of carbon from being released into the atmosphere in a crucial decade for tackling emissions, he said.

He added that the government’s hydrogen strategy was “less helpful than it otherwise could have been” because officials had failed to set out a balance between green and blue hydrogen.

“We do think that it’s important for the government to provide some guidance later this year, certainly on the balance until 2030. It’s one of several gaps in the strategy which make it difficult to judge,” he said.

Read Utility Week’s analysis on the subject, including further thoughts from David Joffe, here

The Guardian

How a green taxes revolt in Redcar could force a change in Tory energy policy

Redcar is bang in the middle of Britain’s climate debate (writes Onward director Will Tanner). At one end of the seafront promenade, on the lip of the Tees Estuary, rests the rusting hulk of this town’s industrial past, the former steelworks. Just a mile out to sea stand symbols of its future: thirty offshore wind turbines opened by EDF in 2014.

Around the bay you can hear the clunking echoes of the iconic steel mill being demolished to make way for a hydrogen, carbon capture, and wind turbine manufacturing hub, part-financed by the taxpayer.

It is places like Redcar that some Conservatives think will revolt if ministers introduce green taxes or ask consumers to switch to eco-friendly products as the UK pursues net zero by 2050.

Voters in the Red Wall will “roll their eyes” at the “idealism” of net zero, one MP said earlier this month.

Others, including the think tank I run, have found evidence that Red Wall towns stand to benefit most from the green jobs and investment that could follow if ministers get policies right, as Redcar’s recent experience attests.

In a focus group moderated by James Johnson of J.L. Partners in Redcar, we put both narratives to the test.

Making the change

The people we spoke to broadly cared about the environment, and thought it important, but their appetite to make expensive changes to their lives was limited.

A majority had heard of “net zero”, but only a few knew what it meant and none knew the legal deadline was in 2050. This date seemed so far away that Kari, a hairdresser, asked: “Why does it have to take that long?” This was not a demand for greater pace. If anything, the mood was one of weary resignation that whatever deadline is set, “we are going to pay for it.”

This reflects weak enthusiasm for tax hikes or price rises to tackle climate change. Most of the group concurred when a HGV driver called Mark said that taxpayers “are already bled enough”.

Just one, a primary school worker called Martin, said he would willingly pay more tax, but even then only if taxes were “fair and balanced”.

Paying for Net Zero

In most national polls, around 70 per cent of people say they think it is important the UK takes action to limit climate change. In Redcar, that support is decidedly more brittle.

But there are important caveats. The first is that while people groan at the prospect of paying for net zero, they completely accept that they will probably have to.

When asked what net zero will mean in practice, one person said it meant that “we will be taxed ridiculously”, another that “it’s going to cost us individually more”.

This was not a group of people in denial, or even particularly angry, about the likely costs of net zero. They know, but worry about whether they can afford it, especially given products likely to rise in price (like meat and petrol) are not luxuries but essential to their daily lives.

Prices and advice

The second point is that this fear is predicated on the belief they will have no option but to pay higher prices.

“Who can afford an electric car?”, despaired Jeanette, a care assistant. Even if they could, remarked Mark, “the chargers are not there yet… maybe in ten years’ time”.

Similar concerns afflicted heat pumps, hydrogen boilers and switching to public transport: until each is cheaply available, “incentives” just feel like taxes.

Trust is further undermined by the fact politicians have told people to go green before, by switching to diesel cars and eco-boilers. “It’s like the pandemic,” said Jeanette. “They change their minds all the time.”

Daily Telegraph

Swimming in sewage: Ilkley River Wharfe in Yorkshire is most polluted bathing site in England, data reveals

A newly designated swimming spot on the River Wharfe in Yorkshire is the most polluted bathing water in England, i analysis can reveal.

In December 2020 a stretch of the River Wharfe in Ilkley became the first river in England to win bathing water designation. On sunny days almost 2,000 people are known to descend on the stretch of river to cool off.

But water quality samples taken by the Environment Agency this summer reveal it is regularly awash with high levels of dangerous bacteria.

The average pollution levels for this summer, based on a mean average from samples taken throughout June, July and August, show bacterial pollution at two testing sites on the river many times higher than levels deemed safe for swimming by the Environment Agency.

Levels of intestinal enterococci, a bacteria which indicates that human or animal faeces may be present in bathing water, were present in concentrations almost ten times higher than Environment Agency safe limits.

Levels of e.coli, a group of organisms that also indicate faecal contamination, were on average present in levels almost 20 times higher than the safe threshold set by the Environment Agency.

The stark results do not surprise Becky Malby from the Ilkley Clean River Campaign, which has spent years campaigning for better water quality in the River Wharfe. “The EA tested data is no surprise,” she told i. “It’s exactly what we wanted it to show. It’s showing what we knew.”

Across England there are 419 bathing water locations. Most are coastal waters, although there are also 12 lakes. The River Wharfe is the only river water designated as a bathing site.

Throughout the summer, from mid-May to the end of September, the Environment Agency regularly tests water quality at bathing water sites across England.

Campaigners lobbied for the River Wharfe to win bathing water status so the Environment Agency would be forced to run regular water quality tests at the site. The River Wharfe designation includes the local sewage works, which regularly discharges untreated sewage into the river during wet weather.

“That’s what triggered us to apply for bathing status,” Ms Malby said. “We were finding out ways of getting the attention, getting the data, getting the spotlight – and really what bathing status has given us is a bit of a platform to begin to get this sorted out.”

“It’s because people use it to paddle, play and swim that you have to get the testing and you have to tell them whether it’s polluted or not,” she explained. “It’s enabled everyone to see it, and that has created a level of horror” .

In response to the findings Yorkshire Water said it was committed to improving water quality on the River Wharfe. “This will not be a short-term fix and will require significant investment as well as multiple agencies working together closely to play their part in achieving our aims,” a spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: “Rivers are very different to coastal waters – and as the first stretch of river to be designated as a bathing water in England, the River Wharfe faces different challenges.”

It said work was already underway with Yorkshire Water, Bradford council and other stakeholders to tackle pollution levels at the site.

iNews

Sturgeon’s independence in tatters after UK refused to continue shared energy

Nicola Sturgeon’s independence vision could be in tatters after the UK Government previously rejected Scotland’s request to continue shared energy should it breakaway.

Scotland’s independence hopes were cast in fresh doubt this week after the country’s deficit soared to £36billion. Many say that one of the main reasons why the first independence referendum failed was because Scots were not wholly convinced that Holyrood’s economic plan was watertight. In 2014, the country’s deficit stood at £12bn.

But now, the deficit has soared to three times as much, with the 2020/21 figures more than double the level of the previous year and a whopping 22.4 percent of GDP.

The economy, then, remains the biggest obstacle to Ms Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) achieving its main goal of separating from the UK.

Yet, there are other fine details that pose equally as much of a challenge.

Energy is a pressing issue, and how Scotland might operate its electricity grid if it were to gain independence.

Currently, the entire UK is connected by the National Grid – a network made of high-voltage power lines, gas pipelines, interconnectors and storage facilities that together enable the distribution of electricity.

The same applies for gas transmission.

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the SNP proposed that a single, Britain-wide, market for both electricity and gas should continue, and that an Energy Partnership with the continuing UK should be established to ensure a joint approach.

In a white paper published at the time, ‘Scotland’s Future’, Holyrood said, “regardless of its source, Scottish generation is now essential to ensuring the lights stay on across these islands”.

It added that: “The continuation of a system of shared support for renewables and capital costs of transmission among consumers in Scotland and the rest of the UK is a reasonable consideration for meeting the UK’s ongoing green commitments.”

The UK Government rejected this proposal, however.

It said it saw no basis to justify continued cost sharing between British consumers for shared renewables support, or for the costs of electricity or gas transmission following independence.

More generally, it argued that the integrated British energy market for electricity and gas “could not continue in its current form”.

Westminster said any decision made would be taken with “national interests of the continuing UK and its consumers” in mind.

Daily Express

Self-driving electric vans and buses arrive in UK

As business winds down at a delivery van depot in Bristol, vehicles head to cleaning bays and electric ones go to the recharging bay as the fleet parks up for the night.

One van, though, is an oddity. Slightly futuristic in look, it picks its way round the depot, looking for all the world as if it is driven by a super-cautious operative.

The van is the first prototype to come out of the research and engineering facility in Banbury of Arrival, Britain’s newest automotive company. And it doesn’t have a driver at all in the conventional sense of the term.

Robopilot is running fully in autonomous mode, blazing a trail as it does so. The day is coming when dozens of electric, autonomous vans in the depot park themselves and, at the start of the next working day, present themselves at the loading bay ready for a human driver to turn up for work and head out on to the open road.

Arrival is a British company backed by Denis Sverdlov, a 42-year-old Russian billionaire. Springing out of computers at a design studio in Kensington, west London, it is going into production of vans for UPS, the delivery company, and buses for FirstGroup in Oxfordshire. Via a reversal into an American shell company, it is valued at $6.3 billion in New York.

Arrival’s Robopilot has pushed the possibilities of unmanned automotive technology in commercial vehicles with the help of £13 million of British taxpayer support from the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Avinash Rugoobur, Arrival’s chief strategy officer, believes that what is achievable autonomously also applies to its buses, which are due on Britain’s roads — not in self-driving mode — next year. “The autonomous technology is immediately addressable inside the controlled environment of a depot which does not change its form or layout,” he said. “Customers will get immediate operational and safety benefits. It removes complexity at the end of a working day.”

This is not the only thing that marks out Arrival in the move away from pollution-emitting commercial vehicles. It is pioneering the microfactory, ripping up production models of the automotive industry that have lasted for a century. “This is an industry which historically relied on billions of dollars of capital expenditure on plants over hundreds of acres that take three years to go into commission, with expensive steel-stamping plants and paint shops,” Rugoobur, 40, said. “The operational efficiency of the conventional automotive plants has been maxed out. We are doing things differently.”

Arrival is taking buildings of 20,000 sq m that might ordinarily have been warehouses. Its vehicles are made from a pre-prepared, pre-coloured super-lightweight polypropylene glass-fibre composite, the sort of stuff that moulded plastic chairs are made of. It is taking battery modules from LG, of South Korea, and making battery packs itself. All of which is designed to make the cost of such vans something like affordable.

Its plant in Bicester will start production in the second half of next year on the way to making 10,000 vans a year for UPS and Leaseplan, a Dutch fleet manager, for the roads in Britain and Europe. Its Banbury R&D centre is producing 12m buses for FirstGroup ready for a trial in the next quarter and service in the spring of 2022. It aims to have a new microfactory in the area from which it plans to make a thousand buses a year.

The Times

Utility Week’s weekend press round-up is a curation of articles in the national newspapers relating to the energy and water sector. The views expressed are not those of Utility Week or Faversham House.