Heat decarbonisation won’t ever get dealt with if we expect consumers to take the lead.
That’s what Tim Rotheray former CEO of the ADE and currently Chief Sustainability Officer at Viridor, told us as we discussed Labour’s heat plans. Tim told us its been a topic governments have circumvented as it’s often too hard to tackle.
He said: “The thing is, it’s so difficult because of its infrastructure. And also it hasn’t had that pull politically to say that it should be the number one thing we’re getting on with.
“Heat is either bad or boring, right?
“When you’re heating doesn’t work. Yeah, it’s bad and it becomes the most important thing in your life. And then when it’s working, it’s just like, okay, I got up and it works. And I’ve never seen anyone get excited about a boiler.
“The other thing is that there’s a lot of political risk. You can have a commercial discussion from government with a business about investing, or you can have try and have lots and lots of discussions where you’re going into people’s houses and dealing with something which ultimately they operate and it’s very personal to them.
“So, politically it’s more appealing and arguably quicker to do things on kind of big power generation. If you’re a minister, it’s kind of cool to be on a ship in the middle of a massive wind farm and you get to declare this wind farm open.
“I’m not ever seeing the minister go into a house and go, I declare this heat pump commissioned. I mean, it’s just not that exciting!”
Tim believes Labour have shown some signs of wanting to change things but convincing consumers to get a heat pump or make their homes more efficient isn’t going to cut it.
“One of the things I find deeply frustrating is that we expect consumers to do the right thing. And it’s so complex.”
He wants the government and sector to use green mortgages and other levers to renovate a house in between being sold, which is on average every eight years.
“You can’t expect consumers to take out loads of credit loans. We’ve got to think about in terms of the house and the value in the mortgage market, there’s a lot of opportunity there at the time at which you sell a house and the opportunity when that house is empty.
“There’s the potential to actually link up the producers of the equipment, be that heat pumps and other energy efficiency measures, you know, solid wall, whatever the consumer and the lender wants, in a way that protects people.”
Listen to the full conversation here.
