The climate crisis is wreaking havoc across the world. Meanwhile in the UK we continue to subsidise new fossil fuel boilers.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
theguardian.com/environment/20…
1) Let’s take a step back to understand what’s going on here. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is a long-standing energy efficiency programme. The first variation of its kind started in 1994. 10 years ago I wrote my PhD thesis on it @ecioxford. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2) ECO (or the Supplier Obligation as it is also known) has always supported installing new fossil fuel boilers. Especially during EEC 1+2 and CERT millions of condensing boilers were installed. This led to very large energy savings. centrica.com/media/1635/bg_… 
3) But since the predecessor of ECO came to an end energy efficiency measure installation rates collapsed especially insulation of walls and lofts.
4) ECO obliges larger energy suppliers to save a fixed amount of energy but does not prescribe the detailed delivery path. Since 1994 there has always been what is called an 'illustrative mix' of technologies government expects energy companies to deliver.
5) So what do the current ECO proposals say about gas boilers? Under the preferred option 45k gas boilers are expected to be subsidised compared to just 30k renewable energy systems (heat pumps and solar PV).
6) In the short-term replacing direct electric heating and an old inefficient boiler will lead to energy, carbon and cost savings for those who benefit from the installation. But in the medium to long-term this is not compatible with the climate goals.
7) Subsidising new gas boilers also risks locking low income households into increasingly expensive heating fuels as my colleague @sunderlandlouis @RegAssistProj explains here. foresightdk.com/getting-off-ga…
8) The European Commission has recognised the problem of funding new fossil fuel heating systems in its Fit for 55 Package proposals. Under the proposals Member States can not longer count energy savings achieved from fossil fuel combustion technologies.
9) However, at the moment most European countries continue to subsidise new fossil heating systems. Given the long lifetimes of these technologies and the need to decarbonise much more rapidly this cannot be a good use of public funds.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
