A recent article in that bastion of intellectual analysis, The Sun newspaper in the UK published a lovely piece of drivel about how the Government MUST create “thousands of plumbers” who will be need to install heat pumps to “fight rising energy bills”.
That headline manages to enclose acres of horse puckey – in 15 words the Sun manages to miss every important point about a) heat pumps b) fighting rising energy bills c) thousands of plumbers.
The link to the article is t the end of this post.
a) Heat pumps – are not actually effective in heating houses. They are loud and then run constantly. And they are very expensive to install and your hot water heating will need supplementation. They are NOT cheap to run.
b) there is no evidence, at all, that heat Pumps reduce the cost of heating. They use a lot of electricity and heat to low levels that require – in most cases -spot heating (also electricity driven) to warm sedentary locations to an acceptable level of comfort. It is the electricity price in the UK that is spiking right now – and which will not be going down – and it is electricity that powers heat pumps.
c) If “thousands of plumbers” are to be recruited what happens when the conversion slows down? what will these surplus of plumbers do then?
The article contains this stupid quote from some “researcher” named Amy Norman “we need government to call up a generation of climate heroes” . If that sounds familiar (and it should) the Heroic Worker is a PR construct of the USSR and Soviet Propaganda. Hero Projects were the standard of industrializing the Soviet Union. As a classic example – Chernobyl was a “Hero Project” when the Soviet Union built it, it became another “Hero Project” when it blew up.
That some “researcher” (as an aside what on earth does Amy Norman ‘research’? Old Soviet documents?) opines that the Uk should adopt Soviet tactics to push through a project that is going to crucify the working class with crippling expenses.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/17567094/plumbers-heat-pump-energy-bills-recruitment/