The government is clearly aware of the huge gap between the reality of heat-pump take-up and the much-trumpeted targets. This is no doubt why it is exerting enormous pressure on boiler and heat-pump manufacturers (the same companies make and install both). The government has told manufacturers that if they fail to increase the current annual rate of heat-pump installation to 68,000 over the course of 2024, they will be fined £5,000 for each extra gas or oil boiler that they sell.
This policy isn’t an outlier. The government is imposing the same kind of punitive quotas on UK car manufacturers as it tries to force them to turn over production to electric models. Its proposed zero-emission vehicle mandate requires that, as soon as next year, carmakers in Britain must sell at least 22 per cent of their output in the form of electric vehicles. This share is scheduled to rise to 80 per cent in 2030, before reaching 100 per cent in 2035. For new vans, the legal requirement will be 10 per cent electric in 2024, 70 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035. Manufacturers that fail to meet these targets will have to pay £15,000 per ‘non-zero-emission car’ they produce and £18,000 per ‘non-zero-emission van’. Any fines that firms incur will almost certainly be passed on to the consumer through price hikes.
This is all too typical of the government’s attempt to ban the UK’s way to Net Zero. It is all stick and no carrot.
[And all fantasy, too. Right now it’s the utopians setting disastrous policies in the UK, but we have the same kind of pushes in Washington and some states here as well, especially California. — Ed]
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