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The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
It's time to stop the scaremongering over heat pumps
If you take away the cost of a gas boiler, which would not be required, this makes the cost difference about £10,000 maximum. Is he suggesting that the housebuilders should leave out the insulation and double glazing as well? The difference in heating costs between a standard house built around 1970 and current standards is significant and I doubt if anyone would want to live in a basic 1970s house or pay the heating bill. The housebuilding standards in the UK for insulation have been extremely poor compared to the standards in Scandinavian countries for at least the last 60 years and we are paying the price now in high retrofit costs to bring them up to a similar standard. Most of the hype about additional measures required to install a heat pump result from this failure in building standards, and any changes to the heat emitters of new-build houses should result in a reduction in costs as less heat output is required. For interest, you only need to replace the heat lost from a building and a heat pump can do this just as effectively as a gas boiler although it may be necessary to increase the radiator size as the flow temperature is lower. This does not apply to new-build and therefore it will not result in additional cost. There was no incentive for builders to build houses with decent insulation and this could have reduced the potential profit per build and it was only when the Government eventually started introducing proper building standards that this situation slowly improved. The before-tax profits of one major housebuilder last year were £359.1 million for 10,664 completions which amounts to £33,674 profit per house (11.1%). Some of these properties will include most of the standards for net zero and should be heat pump-compatible if they are still fitted with gas boilers. I am not suggesting that housebuilders should not make a profit as that is how capitalism works, but perhaps it might put Ross Lambie's claims in perspective. There are lots of reasons why we should be moving from gas to electricity, reducing global warming and saving the planet is only one of them, but misinformation is making a sensible transition more difficult. Iain McIntyre, Sauchie. Read more letters Pride has had its day I found the first half of the letter (June 4) from Rebecca Don Kennedy, CEO of the Equality Network, regarding the removal of Pride flags from lampposts on Arran quite enlightening. I read it thinking that we may well have an outbreak of common sense. Until. The CEO went on to accuse Mark Smith of hypothetical and imaginary views, indeed, accusing him of victim blaming. There then followed a completely non-evidential, truly hypothetical and imaginary reasoning of what someone must be thinking if they dislike a flag. The removal of a flag is straightforward vandalism (if damaged) or theft, and nothing else. Until the perpetrator is found nobody knows what their thought process was. They may just have been having a laugh. Under no circumstances is that then a hate crime. For me, and many like me, I'm afraid that Pride has had its day, and it seems to me that it, and the "inclusive" groups of people behind it, are more about continually causing and promoting division in society. Why can't we all just let people be? Gregor McKenzie, East Kilbride. A Pride march in Glasgow (Image: PA) Frustration over hospital parking Today (June 4) I failed to make a significant appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI), booked at a specialist unit in October 2024. I spent two hours attempting to find a parking space, and failed. I recall that there was some problem in making the GRI car park free, which was eventually resolved. As a regular patient, I enjoyed a brief period when outpatients had an allocated parking area: that privilege did not last. A missed appointment costs the NHS around £233 and I have now to wait until at least September for a new appointment. I do not believe that the GRI car park is solely occupied by staff and patients. Glasgow is restricted and punitive in parking, and I suspect that this car park has a high occupancy of selfish non-entitled healthy parasites. Stewart MacPherson, Kilsyth. Dictionary corner The faulty English usage Steve Barnet despairs of (Letters, May 29) doesn't exasperate me as much as the profusion of malapropisms that have become common. Educated writers can no longer use the following, for fear of being misunderstood: apprise, which will be confused with appraise; beg the question will be supposed to mean pose the question; deprecate (an obscure theological term) seems to be supposed to be a posh modern variant of depreciate; enormity is used as a synonym of magnitude; fulsome is used instead of full (it is cognate with foul); ilk is presumed to mean sort; iconic is used as though it means special rather than totally standard; the verb loathe is used where the adjective loth would be correct; the adjective staunch is used where the verb stanch would be correct. This stems from the modern practice of guessing at meanings instead of consulting a dictionary. Some hold that words should mean what people think they mean rather than what a lexicographer declare them to mean, but this leads to degeneration into baby-talk shorn of all subtlety. Robin Dow, Rothesay. Cruise control It annoys me that CalMac ferries, the latest Glens Sannox and Rosa in particular, are referred to by several of your correspondents as "cruise liners". They are actually "crew's liners", a very important distinction and the root of a large number of the problems imposed on CMAL and CalMac by each other. Peter Wright, West Kilbride.
The Herald Scotland
01-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
There's no need for energy bills to be so high. We need zonal pricing
In Scotland where most of the electricity is generated by renewables there is no need for us to be charged at the cost of using gas, especially when our energy requirements can be over 50% more because of the cold weather. The constant reference to constraint payments is a red herring as it is assessed as being likely to be 'only' £1.8bn in 2025 according to the National Energy System Operator (NESO) and the vast majority of constraint costs (76%) relate to gas generators, which are typically paid to increase output at certain times and replace constrained generation from other sources to ensure demand is met. The biggest driver of constraint cost variation is the wholesale price of electricity – not because wind farms are paid more to turn down, but because gas generators are paid more to turn up when prices are high. Because the wind-generated electricity is governed by the strike price there will be no loss of income for the wind turbine operators and even if the strike price is increased by £20 per MWh at the next round of government auctions for new wind farms as suggested, wind-generated electricity will still be half the cost of gas-generated electricity. The suggestion that the South of England will need to pay more is also misleading as they like other areas already pay for their electricity at gas generation costs and any change should be minimal and certainly nowhere near the 66% more currently paid in the North of Scotland for their higher energy use. Scotland should be paying a more realistic price for electricity and this would lead to more energy-intensive companies locating here, more households changing to air-sourced heat pumps because they would be cheaper than gas to run and more people changing to electric vehicles, all of which would use a lot of the excess electricity generated in Scotland until the national grid is upgraded. The only section which would lose out would be the wholesale energy companies, no doubt comprising most of the 55 energy companies, which would lose some of their excess unearned profit and the UK Government which would lose tax from the windfall profits which it doesn't use to help those in Scotland who use more energy. Europe's association of power grid operators (ENTSO-E) has recommended that Germany, which has a single large power market zone with a unified price including Luxembourg, should be split into at least two zones to stop high prices in one region bleeding across the entire country. Iain McIntyre, Sauchie. Read more letters Buy back the National Grid Norman McNab's letter (April 28) gave a very good summary of the present sad state of our electricity industry resulting from privatisation in 1990. The government (both UK and Scottish) targets to reduce CO2 emissions in the energy sector are failing and the long-term aims are unlikely to be achieved. This is in spite of the fact that oil and gas are heavily taxed and electricity is taxed at 21% which amounts to approximately £21 billion being paid to the Treasury each year. All these taxes are paid by consumers and with energy prices increasing each year the tax take by the Treasury will increase. The electricity grid is a key part of the electricity supply industry and Mr McNab suggests it is 'very unlikely we could ever afford to buy it back again". This a reasonable assessment but I believe that where there is a will there is a way. One way would be to use the approximate £21 billion tax, or part of it over say five years, to buy back the electricity part of the National Grid Co. This is a way to use consumers' money to buy back what they should own in the first place. A further step could be taken by the Government to build and own all new generating plants using government borrowing. This infrastructure investment should be ring-fenced in the Treasury and the borrowing repaid from a proportion of the price of electricity, not from taxation. These issues could be resolved satisfactorily if government were open to new ideas and not locked in to rigid policies. Charles Scott, Edinburgh. Rethink the River City axe Steve Barnet (Letters, April 30) is perfectly correct in his comments regarding news reporting on the BBC, but I would suggest that he is scraping the top of the iceberg regarding the BBC's saturation coverage about what is happening in England, sometimes including items of trivia, while all too often ignoring or distorting what is happening in the other nations of the UK. On Tuesday I watched an episode of River City and thought the acting of all the cast throughout a distressing and harrowing episode, especially the performances of the young actors and actresses, was superb. All credit to them, and all shame on the BBC for wielding the axe on River City. Scotland cannot afford to lose such talent; the BBC should think again. Ruth Marr, Stirling. A scene from River City (Image: BBC Scotland) Sorry, what did you say? I once said to my wife: "Your hearing is getting very dull." She replied: "I know: I'm going to the jeweller to get it seen to." The jeweller will fix your hearing ?" "Not my hearing, my earring, you deaf old bat." But it's not just us oldies. My son asked his wife to pick up some artesian water. On her return she said: "I couldn't find any Cartesian water." Just think: if old Descartes had been a supplier of water he might famously have said "I drink, therefore I am", though I had a boozy old relative who would just as famously have said "I am, therefore I drink." These mishearings are terribly widespread. During one lively debate about doctors one lady said: "OK, doctors can make mistakes like the rest of us – but can't do wrong deliberately. They have to swear that they will 'First do no harm'. I think it's called the Hypocritical Oath." Well, there's a comfort. Donald M Manson, Prestwick.
