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Heat pumps and insulation would cut UK living costs more than new oilfields, study suggests (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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[–] 24 points 5 days ago (12 children)

It's difficult because the money to do this would go to a wide range of companies and people who have no influence on governments. It's the oil barons who can blast money at lobbyists who have the government in their pockets.

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  • [–] 28 points 5 days ago (10 children)

    No I mean not tender for private contracts to do this. Actually do this in a nationalised way.

    Setup a department, NIS (the afore mentioned National Insulation Service), with the motto warmth at the point of use, build a workforce that goes town by town coldest to hottest parts of the country and adds the required missing insulation to however many homes need it starting with low income homes.

    Everyone is so keen on nationalising everything so why not kickstart this and do some good. I say the same thing about home building. Set up a government home building project entirely run by government employees funded by the state. I can understand how there would be NIMBY protectionism against that (can't build that here you'll lower the value of my mansion) but who would argue against insulation?

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  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago (8 children)

    I love it. It makes sense if your goal is to improve the lives of the public and save money long term.

    What it doesn't do is improve GDP (this would actually have a negative effect) or enrich more billionaires. That sort of thing doesn't tend to play well in this country.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    😥

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  • [–] 7 points 5 days ago*

    To be fair, I say this not to demotivate you, but to point out that the problem isn't innovation, or money, or as many in this country seem to think, immigrants. It's not even landlords.

    The problem is that we've organised our society around the wrong incentives. If we're serious about fixing this problem (and I think your "NIS" is a great idea!) we have to approach it with the understanding that building an NIS must start ith abandoning our bad models and ridiculing those that insist it can be done within the existing system.

    We don't necessarily need a communist revolution, but we do need to be honest about Why We Can't Have Nice Things and begin the work of building systems that allow for them while dismantling ones that prevent them.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (4 children)

    It improves gdp. Produces more insulation, more heat pumps, and drives government jobs up.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    You're ignoring the GDP effects of constant consumption in the form of gas. GDP is not a measure of quality of life, let alone a good economy. It goes down as you reduce consumption.

    Heat pumps are a one time, up front cost, and their installation & maintenance is minor compared to the massive, 24hour spend on running a fossil economy.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I don't think the cost of energy used for heating/cooling contributes to GDP (or if it does, that's dumb).

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    It does, and it's one of the reasons GDP is a dumb measure for quality of life. One of the primary factors for measuring GDP is consumption, so if as a society you start growing more food locally, sharing childcare among family, or just choose to repair what's broken rather than buy more plastic crap, your GDP craters in the face of all of these.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago

    My local city in the US had sent people to do energy audits and gave a slight discount on the next month's electric bill if you let them in.

    They would tell you where you needed more insulation and sealing. The city offered rebates for various types of insulation and energy related overhaul.

    The city owned the local utility and they determined it was way cheaper to help reduce energy consumption than to scale up production

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