Comments from the Government’s new Chief Scientific Advisor have not gone down well with top boiler manufacturer Worcester.

They were dismayed by Professor’s David Mackay’s first public comments, on his first day in his new job as chief scientific adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which were designed to set out his vision for Britain’s energy future which centre on a significant increase in nuclear power capacity.

Worcester saw the advisor’s words as a: “…a thinly veiled attack on the use of gas in domestic heating.”

They were particularly irked at the Professor’s words which said:
“Setting fire to chemicals like gas should be made a thermodynamic crime. If people want heat they should be forced to get it from heat pumps. That would be a sensible piece of legislation.”

Neil Schofield, head of sustainable development at Worcester, Bosch Group, said:
“Professor Mackay’s comments set out a vision for Britain’s energy future based upon electricity, but it does not reflect the reality on the ground that domestic heat is predominantly gas powered in the UK. The logistics of replacing all gas-fired boilers with heat pumps, even in the medium term, would be an enormous undertaking significantly dwarfing the conversion from town gas to natural gas in the 1960s and 1970s.
“Professor Mackay has issued a new series of far flung objectives, bearing in mind that nuclear technology will take at least 20-30 years to come on stream, with no thought to the short term, the next 10 years. There is still no clear roadmap for either consumers or the heating industry of how we are going to meet the near term objectives.”
“Professor Mackay talks of people being forced to install heat pumps, but gives no indication of how consumers will be helped with the capital cost or what they should do if heat pump technology is not suitable for their own home. Our experience at Worcester, Bosch Group is that heat pump technology is not suitable for all applications. I would like to ask Professor Mackay how he heats his own house.”

Schofield makes it clear that he believes that the Professor’s comments are a further example of the Government and its advisers contradicting themselves in key policy areas.

He went on to say:
“On the one hand the Government is trying to encourage the uptake of renewable technologies with its proposals for the Feed-in Tariff for the Renewable Heat Incentive, but it is providing no upfront capital help for consumers to install the equipment and is now seriously considering taxing any monies generated. This will inevitably take away a major incentive for renewable technologies and make the Feed-in Tariff very unattractive to consumers.”

No doubt this rift between one of the country’s largest gas boiler manufacturers and a key Government advisor will play out over a long period of time.

Guest Article by Neil Camp