PowerSwitch

Have a listen to Today in Parliament
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... 2_12_2010/ starting at around 4:40.

Lord Lawson prattles on about the government wasting money on non existent climate change. But this is in a debate on the Green Deal, that is about helping people to insulate their houses, financed in a way that reduces their energy costs. And he's doing it in the middle of the coldest weather for years. He might be a denier, but FFS, surely this is something that makes life better regardless of whether climate change is happening .

He can't remember how bad life can be with insufficient insulation. Look at his figure

Someone's just sent me a transcript of this from Hansard. It transpires that the GND won't be able to increase the rate of (for example) cavity wall insulation installing.

Someone even mentioned Jevons' Paradox. I'm impressed they know about it, but it's irrelevant here. Yes the saved energy may be used elsewhere, but given that we're likely to become a poorer country, for ordinary people it probably won't. It'll just keep them tolerably warm, or in less debt.

RenewableCandy wrote:Someone's just sent me a transcript of this from Hansard. It transpires that the GND won't be able to increase the rate of (for example) cavity wall insulation installing.

Why?

It appears the comments about numbers of cavity wall insulation dropping were based on the figures in the Energy Bill Impact Assessment:

http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/legi ... n-deal.pdf

Para 110 has figures based on estimates.

The reason for these being lower than earlier years was given in the debate as :

She reasonably asked why demand for cavity wall insulation is falling. The fact of the matter is that, over the past few years, a lot of simpler cavity walls have been filled and demand is therefore reducing. However, we are now moving into the territory of complicated cavity walls.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 2-0002.htm at Column 1156

I'm not sure how much faith I put in either the estimates given or the reasons.

I'm puzzled why CWI gets mentioned with reference to GD. It doesn't make much sense to me to fund cavity wall insulation. The effort that goes in to setting up the financing and repayment of funds on a measure that costs maybe £200 and pays for itself in a couple of years isn't really worth it.

As for most of the easy cavities being done already, that is correct. the remaining easy ones become harder to find and the remaining hard ones have a cavity of less than 50mm and I don't think they've worked out exactly how to deal with those ones yet.

Ted wrote:It appears the comments about numbers of cavity wall insulation dropping were based on the figures in the Energy Bill Impact Assessment:

http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/legi ... n-deal.pdf

Well I'm impressed so far. According to page 3, it was signed by the responsible Minister on 9/12/2020. Presumably they've sacked all their proof readers to save money .