Summary:
- Industry experts support Kensa’s dismissal of OFTEC’s claims that oil boilers are a more suitable solution than GSHPs for rural householders in fuel poverty.
- Far from being the cheapest option, heat from an oil boiler costs 21% more.
- Dynamic tariffs, heat storage products, smart controls and battery storage permit further savings for heat pumps.
- An oil boiler emits almost five times as much carbon as a ground source heat pump (SAP10 carbon intensity factors).
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT KENSAHEATPUMPS.COM
Kensa’s CEO Simon Lomax sets the record straight
The suggestion by Paul Rose, the CEO of oil heating body OFTEC, that high carbon oil boilers should continue to be the favoured fuel heating solution for rural householders suffering from fuel poverty was based upon the wildly inaccurate claim that such a system offers ‘the cheapest fuel available to off-grid homes.’ Far from being the cheapest option, heat from an oil boiler costs 21% more.
The emergence of dynamic tariffs (which vary electricity charges depending upon the time of use) will permit further savings for the heat pump option as will the use of heat storage products, smart controls and, in some circumstances, battery storage. These technologies are all far more worthy of support via the Energy Company Obligation than the continued proliferation of oil boilers and their excessive carbon footprint.
Using the carbon intensity factors proposed for SAP 10, an oil boiler emits almost five times as much carbon as a ground source heat pump. And we haven’t even talked about air quality. Climate change was caused by oil: oil will not be the saviour.
Industry experts added their support to Kensa’s dismissal of OFTEC’s claims:
David Pearson of Star Renewable Energy replied to Kensa’s article orginally published by H&V News:
Hard to add more than Simon already has other than to say that the real challenge is not to offer a better outcome than oil in the countryside but better than gas in the cities.
This will define our success or failure to provide an outcome our children will be proud of……….and it absolutely will include consideration of air pollution. gas is a dirty fuel by comparison to a heat pump – of course oil being even worse!
Graham Hazell of the Heat Pump Association replied:
Agree with Simon Lomax: the oil industry has some very big questions to answer re climate change.
As Rose says ECO 3 is there to help those less able to pay and it would be easy to support this further for the sake of low carbon solutions for future generations rather than continue to install 100,000’s of oil boilers in the hope that a suitably low carbon low cost bio oil will be viable.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT KENSAHEATPUMPS.COM
