{"id":7908,"date":"2021-05-27T10:23:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T10:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7908"},"modified":"2021-05-29T08:53:24","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T08:53:24","slug":"will-the-dfe-see-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/05\/27\/will-the-dfe-see-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the DfE see sense?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published\u00a0report<\/a>, setting out its proposals for achieving \u2018Net Zero\u2019 carbon emissions that gas boilers should be banned from 2025 to combat climate change, and achieve net-zero emissions by the middle of the century. \u00a0It said that said that no new fossil fuel boilers should be sold from 2025, unless they can safely burn hydrogen.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning ministers were reported (by Bloomberg<\/a>) to be proposing a total\u00a0ban on gas boilers in existing homes by 2035, and considering fining homeowners if they failed to meet the deadline. \u00a0They were said to be proposing this in a new heat and buildings strategy to be published in June. \u00a0By Tuesday afternoon, however, the threaten to fine people had vanished into thin air. \u00a0Perhaps the government had remembered that houses tend to contain voters.<\/p>\n

The psychology here is astonishing. \u00a0Just as bad is the proposal to ban the sale of houses that do not meet increasingly high\u00a0green standards.<\/p>\n

The government is now legally-committed to a zero carbon policy and it is only slowly coming to realise that it cannot be met without significant cost \u2013 and with technology which doesn't yet exist. \u00a0A lot of people will be needing to find between \u00a38000 and \u00a310,000 for a heat pump (and probably new radiators), and more to insulate homes with no cavity walls (there are around eight million of these in the UK). \u00a0This ETI<\/a> article argues for cost-effective, high\u00a0performing retrofits that will enable progress towards energy,\u00a0poverty, health and housing\u00a0goals. \u00a0Amen to that.<\/p>\n

The government (nor any other political party) has no strategy to explain and argue for its policies about all this to a largely unaware public which is hardly likely to be best pleased when it eventually does find out (and also fully wakes up to the implications of transport policy). \u00a0What a pity, then, that the DfE continues to refuse to require schools to engage with these issues with their students. \u00a0I am dead against children being used by government as propagandists in the home, but wouldn't it be useful for government to have informed and interested people in every community who can respond to questions and provide information. \u00a0And at net-zero cost. \u00a0Come on, DfE; you know it makes sense.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published\u00a0report, setting out its proposals for achieving \u2018Net Zero\u2019 carbon emissions that gas boilers should be banned from 2025 to combat climate change, and achieve net-zero emissions by the middle of the century. \u00a0It...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}