As Guardian (amongst others) notes this morning:
The UK's infrastructure needs a big cash injection, with public transport, home heating and water networks all in dire need of renewal, independent government advisers have said.
The investments, of about £30bn a year from the taxpayer and £40bn to £50bn a year from the private sector, would result in savings to the average household of at least £1,000 a year, higher economic productivity, and a better quality of life in the future, the National Infrastructure Commission said.
The figures come from a government-appointed agency.
Remember, Labour has backtracked from its commitment to make investment on this scale, suggesting that managing debt is a high priority.
As ever, I despair: the case for investment at present, is so overwhelming, even given current absurd interest rates, that any government must act now. I just hope that, despite all that they say, Labour is listening. The list of recommendations is controversial, but the debate is needed now. The Guardian summarises those recommendations as:
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Substantial investment in public transport for England's biggest cities must be accompanied by restrictions on car access to alleviate congestion.
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Hydrogen must not be used for home heating, despite government enthusiasm for the technology. Hydrogen should be exploited for use in heavy industry.
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People on lower incomes should have heat pumps installed free, while the other two-thirds of households should receive subsidies of £7,000 each for their installation. Upgrading homes with high levels of insulation is not needed before installing heat pumps.
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Water meters should be compulsory for households and businesses.
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No new waste incinerators should be built, and recycling rates need to improve.
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The decision to cancel the northern leg of HS2 was “deeply disappointing” and “leaves a major gap in the UK's rail strategy”. Armitt said it would result in an “overload” of the west coast mainline, or encourage more people and freight on to the roads.
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Para 3. managing debt?
Indeed
Corrected
Thank you and well said, Richard.
In the past year, I have spent a fair bit of time overseas, work and pleasure, and am alarmed how the UK is falling behind. Where I go are often visited by Britons, more likely for pleasure. I often wonder what they observe. For example, Mauritius, whence my parents came, is resurrecting its colonial era railway system with trams, a system dispensed with circa 1960 as the mother country was axing much of its network, and integrating them with buses.
Two years ago, a headhunter told me how Blair is recruiting public health professionals to staff his foundation and its consulting off shoot. The Blair group, which has made big profits this year, is now recruiting economists, often young Treasury officials who don’t know anything other than neoliberalism. They are helping to write Labour’s plans in tandem with banksters from Barclays and HSBC, both former employers, and, from time to time, banksters from Citi, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. My former trade body colleagues think it’s better for them to influence behind the scenes and not join any working groups, but leave the member banks to decide for themselves.
Richard,
Slight typo I think. I am sure that you meant to say that Labour have majored on managing debt and not date.
I hope that there are at least some in the Labour party that take notice of your sound judgement, but I am increasingly of the opinion that their adherence to a Tory-lite approach to government finances mean we are in for a number of years of more of the same.
Corrected
Thanks
As always the refusal to make the obvious public investment is underlaid by unthinking Monetarism ideology which in turn results in a constant outpouring of mindless rhetoric. This is why it’s now so hard to believe the political system in the UK is fit for purpose.
In a war, we have no option but to find money. Climate change is potentially as or even more dangerous.
The problem is not ‘should we spend’ but ‘how’.
Agreed
I’ll confine my comments to what I know something about.
In the case of hydrogen (H2), low voltage networks in urban & suburban locations will not, in most cases support high levels of heat pump (HP) installations (30% is circa the limit). It follows from this that they will not support high levels of HPs & home EV charging. This is a reality. The limiting factor is low voltage cables sized for household loads that DID NOT include heat. Overloading an LV cable means volt drop for those at the end of the cable (supply contracts DO NOT, commit to giving you elec – but they do commit to voltage within statutory limits – 230 volts +10%/-6%). Most LV cables are direct lay, which means their replacement is men-with-shovels. (replacing overloaded transformers is easy – but they, for the most part are not the problem). For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not offering a point of view, but realities, which privately, DNO engineers agree with. Thus to decarb household heat will require: a) vastly more work on thermal insulation, b)heat pumps and some network modifications, c) some H2 & fuel cells (which provide network support where they are most needed –on the LV network. You will notice how “messy” the solution is. Sub-optimal, not ideal. Welcome to the real world.
HS2 should be cancelled in its entirety and the UK should go all out to implement modern signalling i.e. European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) & max out on electrification & sort-out the pathetic state of regional rail.
In the case of infrastructure, I have come around to the view that ALL national infra (water, elec, gas) should have government owned systems operators, responsible for operation and network investments.The current asset owners would then only fulfil a maintenance role & would be stripped of any & all responsibility in terms of investments. If gov needs to make investments, it needs to be in control. Taking this step would be simple & low cost. Taking National Grid for example – taking over the national control centre, the planning function and all data collections activities – would be low cost. It would also strip a private company of any control over investment – given National Grid (and others) are paid based on the value of their asset base – you can see how this move would ensure that investments were made that were needed, not those that bolsters NG’s profits. Etc etc.
Much to agree with
The real need for high-speed rail on a national scale would:
a) require to include everyone (the North was included, then excluded; because it was never going to serve anything outside making Birmingham a London suburb) but including Scotland, and indeed Wales; which were explicitly omitted from the beginning. Fact.
b) would acknowledge as an objective railways competing with air transport. It doesn’t; not on national or international destinations; not on price. We no longer have the rail infrastructure (the volume/capacity to do it). High-speed rail should have taken Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, London and Cardiff – to the Channel tunnel, by-passing London altogether. Much much cheaper – for everybody. But this is Brexit Britain; we have built decline, decay and collapse into our national purpose.
Am I completely wrong? Fine, I seek illumination. Then prove it. Facts. Sources. Nothing else will do. But the guff that led us here has to stop.
It should read “Birmingham and Cardiff”; blooper number (n+1).
‘Upgrading homes with high levels of insulation is not needed before installing heat pumps’.
Room temperature is a balance of heat in vs heat out. Heat pumps provide a much lower heat output than gas or oil (35 v 70). Since UK houses are quoted as losing heat 3x faster than other northern European houses, it means that trying to heat a house using a heat pump means that it may well struggle to meet the desired temperature and as a consequence the heat pump would be running very long hours trying to reach the target temperature due to a constant high loss of heat.
A quote that I received for a heat pump stated that we would need to use the wood burning fire to supplement the heat pump when the outside temperature was ‘cold’. No definition of cold was given. When specifically asked about heat pump runs hours, they admitted that the heat pump would run long hours when cold but declined to give an example. Their constant reliance on the high CoP masked a real world issue of actual electricity running cost. ‘Octopus Energy says in a poorly insulated home it will cost as much as 40% more to run a heat pump rather than a traditional boiler’ – Guardian 23 Oct 2021.
So heat pumps may be suitable in new builds or well insulated houses, but it seems that the very long run hours in less well insulated houses would mean much higher electricity is used.
Even new builds may not be suitable since I expect UK build standards are still miles behind those in Europe. Someone I know got a nasty shock when their new build house heat pump system struggled to reach a comfortable temperature and they used their wood stove to boost it. Also given the length of time it takes a heat pump to increase the temperature, reducing the overnight temperature and increasing it in the morning becomes unrealistic. Heat pumps work best with a constant temperature, which can mean too warm over night.
Seems that too often heat pumps are still in the double glazing cowboy stage. It’s also notable that air to air multi-split heat pumps are almost never mentioned, yet they appear to be a more realistic option (easier to install & more effective at heating) than air to water radiator heat pumps, although leaky UK houses will still cost a lot more to heat than those elsewhere. Insulation matters.
An Ad Hoc strategy would seem best to heat your home if it’s a 50mm cavity wall structure. Use a bit of everything till the mists clear but avoid using wood burning stoves if you possibly can. I don’t have much confidence in silly Monetarist governments doing much in the future to come up with the necessary strategies for the benefit of all.
I used to live in a largish stone built 4 bed house in the country – two two bed Somerset Miners Cottages knocked together.
We had storage heaters.
In the morning I would get up while the Economy 7 was still on, put the washing which had run overnight into the tumble drier and then go for an (electric} shower.
One winter morning I blew the Company (100A) Fuse – it wasnt properly installed which didnt help.
When that was sorted, a few days later the fuse on the phase of the transformer that served my house blew, basically over time the houses it fed had gradually added more heaters, showers etc until one day it went wrong.
There was a discussion going on, on a forum I am a member of.
It involved preserved railways but the message applies to everything, basically that whatever you have, in order to keep it working you have to spend a certain amount on it each year to keep it working, now obviously some years you will need to spend a lot, others not much.
Now I dont think that we have spent anywhere close to enough in the UK to keep our infrastructure, both private and public in good order for decades. Now its all starting to break down.
If we dont start spending a lot more soon we will be in real trouble
At least from the summaries, there seems to be no mention of ridiculous nuclear. Wind and solar – despite being massively more cost effective than even a few years ago – are being almost sidelined. Investment there needs multiplying by ten
With regard to air source heat pumps, we have had to build substations to support the local electricity infrastructure because of the power draw on large schemes where they are being used.
I find it hard to accept the statement about insulation – the ASHP will have to work harder in draughtier houses and also where there are cold bridges from outdated design and components. This is bound to increase energy consumption and we also note that end users need to get used to using them – they are not gas central heating.
As for HS2, why did we build new and not simply improve what we have and open up more mothballed or closed lines?
I recall 10 years ago, working for WWF on sustainable consumption, it was obvious then that reducing energy consumption was critical and a huge factor and tackling carbon. A lot easier than shifting to new forms of energy generation – whilst continuing to waste it. That especially meant tackling housing but since then attempts have been half hearted at best and new build construction quality continues to be mediocre.
I just wonder why we can’t break the problem down and tackle it in phases? Very old property is always going to be a problem, though emerging technologies may help, so a blanket insistence on all properties being at a certain standard is just not feasible. We dont have the resources to do it for starters.
So start with new builds – they should all be zero carbon, no ifs and buts. I’d even be inclined to make builders bear the costs for those constructed in the last 10 years…
Then move to housing built in the last say 20-30 years – which ought to have been built to much higher standards. Tackle them next as they are a lot easier to upgrade. And yes offer low interest loans and subsidies. Arguably energy companies ought to share the burden as it will be saving them the costs of building new energy generation capacity.
And so on, working steadily back. Of course individuals can choose to upgrade their properties anyway but just trying to blanket coerce everybody simultaneously is impractical and guaranteed to alienate many.
“People on lower incomes should have heat pumps installed free, while the other two-thirds of households should receive subsidies of £7,000 each for their installation. Upgrading homes with high levels of insulation is not needed before installing heat pumps.”
I fully agree on subsidy principle and, from a position of almost total ignorance, I have some points/questions
A). As others mention “heat pumps” will require a significant re-plumbing of the “last-mile” network (c.f. conversion to natural Gas?). In parallel to property-by-property changes on a massive scale.
B) Some homes will just not heat effectively by heat pump, given their inherent level of heat loss. Insulation *may* help such cases.
C) I’ve read that the National Grid, and in particular the placement of current power stations will also require some significant change to support a massive change of load due to ubiquitous domestic heat pumps.
Unsupported by data, I surmise a national insulation drive is a higher priority than you give it.
1) Deployment and effective returns could be in 2-5 years (?). No depreciation, no maintenance, assets increase in value over time.
2) Insulation must(?) be cheaper than heat pump fitment on most properties, given the need to double radiator sizes, microbore piping etc. Heat pump installation and operating costs would be lower once insulated.
3) Insulation program is quickly scalable. Labour force can be more easily assembled and deployed. Importantly, lower cost to scale down when money is tight
4) Can run independently in parallel to a heat pump initiative, allow that to focus on sweet spots.
5) Needs no network changes locally or nationally, so more agile.
6) Little additional manufacturing is required. Material Supply is easier to secure.
This is not to pretend that insulation is easy or a panacea. It will be more or less effective a a property level. Given competent government, we would have done this years ago. And, given our track record of managing large projects…
You are right on the need for re plumbing of the last mile and insulation
I have been arguing this since 2008
Having lived all over the Midwest US and Southeast US, I can tell you that heat pumps are not efficient when the temperature drops (and remains for some time) below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heat pumps are efficient if you live in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina…etc…etc… but they ARE not efficient if you live in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio…etc…etc.
If a heat pump is not efficient in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio…etc…etc, then I do not see how a heat pump could be efficient in the UK. If one must have an additional radiant heat mechanism as a “backup”, why have a heat pump in the first place?
I do not want to even get started on the UK “roads” problem as I do not want to offend anyone. Every time I have discussed the problems with UK roads with by Britt Buddies (Norfolk & Leicestershire based), I have offended someone.
Just before the Armitage report came out, another report highlighted just how bad the U.K. is at planning and implementing major infrastructure projects. Costs and timescales that far exceed those in other countries.
https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too-expensive
One can speculate that if HS2 was costing a third of what is now projected, we might not be debating it.
There is no question that huge investment is needed in the country’s infrastructure but we urgently need to get to the bottom of why we have been so bad. And fix it. Having reviewed a lot of programmes over the years, I suspect that there will be multiple causes, not just the pat answers favoured by politicians.
That is of course Armitt and not Armitage! Spellchecker…
“just how bad the U.K. is at planning and implementing major infrastructure projects.”
Never understood why Westminster does not want to fund infrastructure (roads, rail and bridges) for the UK as a whole because this is MPs bringing home the “bacon” for their constituencies and supports well paying jobs.
“Water meters should be compulsory for households and businesses.” Except, perhaps, in Scotland?
Plastics are largely polymerized hydrocarbons derived from oil. It is very difficult to recycle them once they are mixed because you end up with an inseparable sticky mixture. It does make sense to incinerate them, and to use the generated heat, as we will be doing with the original feedstock, oil, for generations to come.
People are worried about the production of dioxins, because they remember the Seveso disaster of 1976 (or they have a folk memory of it). That was very bad, but with a properly operated, high-temperature, incinerator, dioxin production can be eliminated. HCl is produced, but this can be scrubbed with lime, just as SO2 is removed by ‘scrubbing’ towers in coal power stations.
A lot of recycling end up in dumps in Africa. We would be much better off disposing of plastics by pyrolysis and oxidation in plants we can monitor.
Plastic is such a versatile packaging material, we should continue to use it, at least while it has an overwhelming advantage in terms of cost.
I have to say that this feels like propaganda. Do you have interests you should be declaring?
I find much of this thread interesting. Having already contributed to the discussion about what I regard as the absolutely farcical & irrational obsession with AS Heat Pumps, I am not inclined to add more except to congratulate Mike Parr on his analysis.
Equally tempted to enter the water meter, HS2, Hydrogen, Israel-Gaza & uncle-tom-cobbley-&-all discussions & arguments, I am not going to, unless requested to do so.
Why?
Well, it is not due to lack of interest or viewpoint (I differ on several of your points), but more to do with a sense that we are all sidetracking ourselves away from the core points that public investment is desperately needed across the board (not just public transport – I know that you are fully aware of this), that we cannot get such investment if subscribing to what one of your correspondents eloquenty described some time ago as “the ludicrous narrative of National Debt, if we persist with the distorted language & memes of debt, borrowing etc….& of course the ever-present “household analogy”
Tony Blair, pulling the strings of the puppet Starmer, recently said “…we can’t keep on dipping into the public pot..” & “…we cannot keep on using public funds..” Rachel Reeves, interviewed about her time at BOE said “..It is because I worked at the bank that I understand that the sums must add up…”. That is right up there with “Brexit means Brexit..” whatever that was supposed to mean!
My theme (& my obsession I guess) is that we are all not only preaching to the converted generally, but concerning ourselves about WHAT to do with the money/investment, BEFORE getting the politicians to even talk about HOW such money/investment could be accessed – the latter of course is your area of expertise, Richard.
Is there anything we can do collectively to make politicians listen & to discuss? I am generally world-weary & wary of issue-by-issue petitions, but could we collectively assemble a 5 or 6 bullet-point petition-stlye document advocating financial reform (& maybe a short U-tube video?) for publication to VoxP, BYline S, Open D, BMA & NHS publications, Unions, Electoral Reform Ass etc….+ an actual petition to Parliament itself?
Here’s a couple of ideas for the bullet-points – note that I do not need to be the arbiter of what might go into it….
WHY DO POLITICIANS, BoE, & MEDIA (inc BBC) INCORRECTLY INSIST THAT MONEY FOR PUBLIC SPENDING & INVESTMENT IS LIMITED, IN SHORT SUPPLY, &/OR HAS TO BE “BORROWED”, OR EVEN THAT “WE HAVE NO MONEY LEFT”. ANY CURRENCY-ISSUING NATION OR BLOC IN THE “DEVELOPED” WORLD WITH A REASONABLY MANAGED TAX SYSTEM CANNOT, REPEAT CANNOT, RUN OUT OF MONEY.
ANYTHING WE CAN ACTUALLY DO, WE CAN AFFORD from JMKeynes – perhaps amplify the first bit with a short checklist
The debate MUST be moved into the political domain – otherwise the Neoliberal bandwagon will keep on rolling. Any thoughts – anyone & everyone
I am not a fan of petitions, but, thoughts anyone?
Is not this “petitions” idea what caused the Brexit mess????
Do most most people actually understand “petitions” or “referendums” and how results can be tangled, twisted and maligned into more positions than found in “The Joy of Sex” to do almost anything politicos, MPs and Congress Critters want to do?
There is a formal systemn of petitioning government in the UK that can require parliament to address an issue.
This is nothing like a referendum.
I am curious. Does the “petition issue” really get truly addressed or is lip-service just paid?
Sorry about getting the terms mixed-up. In the USA, most referendums (city, county and state level) begin with “petitions”.
Lip service, at best
As I wrote myself, “I am generally world-weary & wary of issue-by-issue petitions”, & I agree with the “lip-service at best” comment. The very mention of a petition seems to be going down like a lead balloon, not the first (& won’t be the last) of my ideas to do so! I can however easily laugh it off: not so however with my caveat to the effect that the neoliberal bandwagon will just keep rolling on, unless some means can be found to get all of this into the political arena.
Heaven only knows how much dedication & effort you have put in Richard . I have tried & continue to do my bit, (nowhere near to your scale & effect of course) over the last 12 years or so. I don’t however want to snuff it with the cause of my death being recorded as “repeatedly banging his head against a brick wall”. Forgive my gallows humour – sometimes my only defence against the sheer intransigence of the status quo.
So, what can we do either indivudually and/or collectively? I will try writing to some of those “alternative” publications I referred to earlier, people who have left the BBC but still get an audience, James O’Brien/LBC, & others who seem to be “mensch” but don’t ever, as far as I can see, discuss that financial status quo, & in many cases still refer to “taxpayers money”.
I cannot sit back & do nowt!
How about you lot?
Go well
This game is intensely frustrating
I agree a strategy for public investment is essential, but recognise this “household analogy” fallacy has ubiquitous acceptance today in the UK. Are other countries different in this respect, I wonder?
Irrespective, it’s a big challenge to educate/convince a large proportion of citizens ( 52% ?), given our media backdrop, and hostility to “experts”. Why is it clear to some, but not broadly understood? It seems there is limited public interest today. How do you even get started on this?
I suggest we need a political leader to create stark clarity of demand, with a few achievable projects with undeniable benefit. Examples might be 1 million Social houses, National Insulation, Universal Social Care.
With that demand publicly recognised, propose *how* to fund these “essential” goals. To explain this, identify a competent and popular expert, provide much clearer messaging than exists today, and make these projects a highly visible on the political stage, making them impossible to water down or cancel without public acceptance.
Design these projects for 5-year delivery cycles. “Proper” long-term projects would have to wait until the model is proven. Does anyone have Keir’s mobile number? 🙂