Jane Clifton: Why the UK hates heat pumps and EVs

Aug 17, 2023

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Electric vehicle charging point in Central London. Photo / Getty Images

It takes dedication to be querulous in the face of genuine technological progress, but if you’re determined, no matter how low you set your expectations, there’s always room to excavate.

Among the most adept burrowers are electric vehicle (EV) sceptics and heat pump refuseniks. The benefit of battery-powered transport over carbon-emitting transport seems to them a personal affront, and in the UK, the government has even identified a “cultural” aversion to heat pumps, despite their environmental and – when correctly installed – fiscal superiority to Britain’s traditional boilers.

It absolutely made these grizzle gutses’ day when a Scottish police van had to physically stop an EV early this month, after its driver phoned in panic over unresponsive brakes. It’s still not clear why the brakes baulked, but the resulting glee would suggest such a malfunction was utterly unknown in the history of the internal combustion engine.

Given the still-vast gulf between the EV and conventional vehicle numbers, statistics can’t yet tell us much about their comparative safety. You could argue – albeit at the perverse risk of making an EV sceptic agreeably choleric – that with little more than a chassis and a battery, there’s exponentially less of an EV to malfunction. Never mind that it’s mostly bad driving and cluelessness that cause accidents, rather than spontaneous car malfunctions.

Similarly, many of the exploding-EV-battery horror stories devolve into the jackass category: unqualified tinkerers mucking about with them.

As for heat pumps, there does seem a vein of British exceptionalism in the militant opposition. The UK has Europe’s lowest installation rate, a fraction of France’s.

The household boiler, for decades the staple and tyrannical butt of sitcoms and novels, forever failing, exploding and gobbling money, is now a revered taonga.

The UK’s older buildings are hard to insulate, which can be a deal-breaker for heat pump effectiveness. But a new government assessment shows Britons also believe their climate is much more changeable and their housing stock much less insulate-able than that of all those European countries smugly installing pumps in growing numbers. Can it possibly be true that the UK has borne the disproportionate brunt of global warming’s weather chaos (even though many heat pump sceptics are also climate change sceptics)? Is an old Welsh tenement really that much draughtier than an old Polish one? No wonder the researchers tactfully termed this a “cultural” resistance.

Heat pumps’ early years in New Zealand – which also fancies itself as having a mercurial climate and draughty housing – were patchy. But with experience, effectiveness increased and controversy ebbed. Subsidies helped, but are emphatically not helping in the UK, even now the government has bumped them up.

As so often, the real problem is not the changes themselves, but fear of them. People distrust the often-expensive technological changes they feel browbeaten into making. They seem impositions, not improvements. Any fishhooks – and EVs and heat pumps have plenty – are seized upon and cherished, making it easier to discount the case for change, however overwhelming and however factually it’s supported.

Subconsciously, the British are likely snarlier than their neighbours about their leaders’ green injunctions, not because of their particular weather or housing but because of the massive breaches of faith of Partygate at 10 Downing Street and other gorblimey political antics of recent years.

Still, while the looming election (by January 2025) may punish the government for its “we know what’s good for you” politics, the likely change to Labour may not appease. Its latest public health policy is to make schools give children tooth-brushing lessons.

Disclaimer: the writer has (and loves) an electric car, but is considering using it only in conjunction with a blood-pressure monitor as its mileage estimates range from the repressively Spartan to the extravagantly Trumpian.

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