Andrew Sissons

The joke was deliberate (regrettably!)

I think it got there first time… which probably says more about me than the autocorrect 😬

Your trusted source of information on heat pumps Learn about the future of home heating with Get a Heat Pump: offering independent information, tools and guidance for homeowners.

We built a website that goes through the main things here
www.getaheatpump.org.uk

You can also try putting your details in to Heat Geek or Good Energy - both have decent indicative estimates of what it might cost

Plumbing depends on your home - you might need some new radiators (basically the radiators have to big enough to transmit the heat efficiently). New rads is not a massive deal.
It’s possible but not common that you need some pipe changes

This will teach me to make heat pump jokes!

So a normal heat pump (normally called an air source heat pump) heats up your radiators and does hot water. You don’t need anything separate. You do need a hot water tank if haven’t already…

Thanks Tessa!
On the North Sea, I v much agree it is unlikely to make any meaningful difference and should be way down the list to think about.
But an increase in exports (if and when it actually happened) would reduce net imports, I think?

Some people carnot believe it, but it's true

This is excellent from Andrew on the best approach to tackling the latest fossil fuel crisis. On the North Sea, worth bearing in mind that more than 80% of the oil produced in the UK is exported (& what's left in the NS is mostly oil) so the impact of more oil production on net imports is v limited

The energy edit Every six weeks Andrew Sissons - deputy director of the sustainable future mission - will assess the most important signals and trends underpinning the UK’s energy transition.

What can Britain actually do about an energy crisis? What did we do right and wrong in 2022, and what can we learn?

Here's a thread on my new piece on what to do about an energy crisis...
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-ene...

Inexplicably, VW no longer make the Touran - objectively a better family car. Even though it’s second hand values are unbelievably high.
Honestly, SUVs are anti-family even for the family inside!

We tried many different “family” SUVs, all of which were very wide on the outside… and did not even come close to passing the test.
The VW Touran (a compact MPV) passed this test so easily, and was much narrower on the outside. Also had 7 seats and an enormous boot.

Just to elaborate… when I had to buy a new family car some years ago, me and my mother-in-law took two car seats around to all the car show rooms.
We had a test for every car which was: can you fit two car seats and one of us in the middle, while being narrow enough to fit down our road.

2) The manufacturers have pushed everyone towards SUVs, presumably because they can make a bigger margin on them. Insanely, they stopped making wonderful cars (like the VW Touran) and made bigger, far less spacious SUVs. Perhaps changing the upfront price would change their calculation on this?

The wrong chapter of the textbook - Philosophy of Money Climate policy: where economics went wrong Regular readers of this blog will be aware of a twelve month hiatus since I last posted anything. There is a good reason. Corinne Sawers, a sustainability ex...

Haha, sorry, I sent a spicy tweet and then logged off. I will read your replies, I promise. But just to say the theory behind this is:

1) The crucial Lonergan / Sawers point that, when taxing bads, you need to tax elastic things (buying cars) not inelastic things (petrol, car tax)

Ah so I think part of this is that the car makers don’t make sensible family cars any more.
We are v lucky to have a VW Touran which is not that big on the outside but *palatial* inside. They stopped making them (presumably for margin reasons)… yet the second hand values are insanely high

Random thought (definitely didn’t occur to me while doing the school run on the bike):
if we want to tax very heavy cars, we should put a levy on the purchase price rather than on vehicle tax etc.

Why? The decision you’re mainly trying to influence is the decision to buy the car in the first place

Energy shock will force business rethink, says State Street CEO Supply chain break caused by war was a ‘Covid moment’ for companies, says global financial services group chief

“The one prediction I’m going to make is that as we get to the other end of this, no one is going to leave themselves exposed like that again,” he added.

Striking to hear financial services chiefs talking about fossil fuels and renewables like this…

Am I the only person who only knows who Wilt Chamberlain is because of a political philosophy book?
This is normal for a British person, right?

I was kind of hoping for something more long term

Also liked this pair of charts, showing how much more of an issue oil is this time (so far) relative to gas.

(But note that the scale for the gas chart is much much longer, because the 2022 spike in gas prices was so much greater)

I mention this partly because Martin had a column with a different message that I took issue with last week…

Good summary here of the economic consequences of the Iran war by Martin Wolf here.
Especially pleased to see this paragraph. There is an economic imperative to switch to renewable energy (as well as a climate one)…

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Is that def true for larger facilities? Feels like a lot of the issues I see are with large contractors?

In all the cases I’m thinking of it’s very much “the issue has been logged” and then nothing happens for a long long time

Ooh yes - and such a big problem in flats for older people (sorry to hear!)

I guess maybe there’s a combination of it being harder for on-site staff to repair stuff now plus it being hard to write contracts that don’t result in a poor service…

Ah that is good data (though bad situation)

This feels like one of those issues where it’s impossible to be sure whether things have actually changed, or your perception has.
Probably no data on it (?), very hard to confidently know what the past was really like… and I bet if you polled people they’d all say it’s got worse

Any large organisation that has to make regular repairs to things will tell you it's harder to find contractors in the last few years. In social housing the time properties are vacant between lets has increased for precisely this reason.

Is it just me, or is everything taking longer to fix when it breaks these days?

Have noticed so many things - like the escalator at the shopping centre, various machines at the gym - that seem to stay broken.
Is this new? And if it has, what’s the issue? Lack of skills to repair? Parts shortages?

Not sure this is a fair characterisation of current policy. There's a lot of emphasis on trying to improve the proposition (with a notable failure in one v important area), and numbers aren't going up much.

And I know you'd disagree, but the alternatives aren't attractive (and create other issues)