O clima na Flórida fez uma mudança nesta semana. A umidade caiu e as temperaturas médias diárias estavam entre 70F e 80F com céu azul claro. Típico, essa foi a semana que eu escolhi para fazer uma rápida visita voadora ao Reino Unido. Não é tudo. O grande público britânico temia ter suas caldeiras a gás arrancadas à força do armário sob as escadas e substituídas por uma bomba de calor fortemente subsidiada. Com mais precisão, quem vai pagar por isso é a questão ardente. Gasolina ou veículos a diesel. Switches me custou US $ 2500 - cerca de £ 1750 - o que é necessário algum desconto. O primeiro -ministro declarou que ele havia encontrado alguns reparadores de caldeiras a gás e eles lhe disseram que poderiam alcançar esse preço reduzido até 2022, sem incomodar. Energia. Crise, mas eu sei que exércitos de lobistas estarão enxameando em Westminster e Washington para garantir que eles obtenham suas preocupações com os pagamentos em voz alta.
As I stepped off the plane in Manchester, the weather reports told me we were in for unseasonably warm, clammy weather in the UK as hot humid air from Florida was racing across the Atlantic.
I genuinely had, it seems, brought the weather with me.
But it appears that isn’t all.
I thought I’d left behind a fractious U.S. political debate about climate change and renewable energy legislation, one which is seeing a small number of ‘moderate’ Democrats threatening to sink the President’s flagship policy wishes.
But upon checking my email and social feeds as I walked down the jetway at Terminal 2 it seems I was entering an equally lively conflab about climate and energy, one where the Great British public were fearful of having their gas boilers forcibly ripped from the cupboard under the stairs and replaced with a heavily subsidized heat pump.
Climate change and how to reverse or slow it clearly seems to be the challenge on both sides of the pond. More accurately, who is going to pay for it is the burning question.
President Biden’s plan is to tax the rich, the multinationals and the polluters to pay for drastic cuts in emissions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s idea seems less clear cut, but he is explicit in saying that it isn’t going to target fossil fuel users, heavy industry or utilities, airlines or drivers of gasoline or diesel vehicles.
Boris’s plan it seems hinges on driving down the cost of heat pumps – currently around £10,000 – to something more equivalent to the price of a replacement gas boiler and ‘letting capitalism’ do the rest.
I paid particular attention to this snippet as I’d just had a new boiler fitted to bring my home up to code and with all the installation and necessary safety switches it cost me $2500 – about £1750 – so that is some discounting required.
Stood in line waiting for immigration control, I watched a feed of Boris speaking at what appeared to be a hastily arranged visit to a gas boiler showroom. The PM declared he had met with some gas boiler repairmen and they had told him they could achieve this price cut by 2022, no bother.
Boris, clearly cheered by this news, breathlessly told reporters that this was another sign of the great entrepreneurial spirit alive in the UK since Brexit, the storied history of British design and invention and the dream that the UK was set to soon be the Silicon Valley of Clean Energy.
I don’t know about you but whenever I hear politicians say ‘Great British design’ images of the Austin Allegro always flash before my eyes.
I don’t proclaim to know if raising taxes, enforcing polluter pays policies or subsidizing new inventions is going to be best in solving the climate and energy crisis but I do know armies of lobbyists will be swarming around Westminster and Washington to make sure they get their paymasters concerns loudly heard.
The U.S. oil and gas lobby – lead by API, American Petroleum Institute - provavelmente são os mestres disso. Eles representam todos os envolvidos na produção de petróleo e gás, distribuição e vendas e, para todas as intenções, financiam as campanhas eleitorais de quem quer ganhar um assento no Texas, Oklahoma, Virgínia Ocidental, Alasca e qualquer parte do país que procura Baby Baby, Breath ou cortam os topos de Mountains a ficarem em barato. Interesses, eles fizeram um trabalho fenomenalmente bem -sucedido de marcar seus oponentes como manivelas e esquisitos. E isso não é apenas o
Not only do they have politicians scared to act against their interests, they’ve done a phenomenally successful job of branding their opponents as cranks and weirdos. And that’s not just the Rick-rolling de Greta Thunberg, eles minimizaram com sucesso a credibilidade do setor de energia renovável.
In adrastic move the manufacturers and deployers of wind and solar energy have recently had to completely rebrand their lobbying effort from the birkenstock-Esque Associação de Energia eólica para o som muito mais de trabalho de trabalho= 359 [American Power Association || Eles são pesados no setor de energia, no ano passado and have added Florida utility NextEra Energy to its board. They are heavyhitters in the Energy sector, last year nextera A avaliação de mercado de Soupous excedeu a de Exxon Mobil. Se o
Hats off too to the energy sector lobbyists in the UK. If the UK Heat Pump Association existir, eles ganharam seu milho este mês.
, mas ainda não tenho certeza se o plano de Boris funcionará. Minha nova caldeira trouxe minha propriedade para o padrão, ela reduziu meus prêmios de seguro e é menos provável que exploda ou vazasse fumaça venenosa do que a antiga - todas as razões extremamente válidas para eu mudar isso. Mas não está reduzindo muito a minha pegada de carbono, é apenas marginalmente mais eficiente que a antiga e não levou a contas de potência queda.
Por quê? Minha casa na Flórida, como milhões de outros, não é muito bem isolada. O ar frio de A/C vaza para fora das portas e janelas durante o verão e, quando jogamos o calor, brevemente durante as noites de inverno, não é retido pela parede fina e pelo teto. Solo. Rather than subsidizing heat pumps, perhaps the PM would have been better pushing the billions of pounds he is pledging to find for his greening initiative into making insulation cheaper, setting higher build standards for new homes, and then showing people how
In the UK, older properties are tough to insulate efficiently too, often without cavity walls and lacking the crawl space to lay insulating barriers between floor tiles and the frigid permafrost of the British soil.
Sticking a heat pump in may work wonders in freezing Stockholm where all houses are built to the highest levels of insulation, but a two up-two down in Stockport is an entirely different proposition. Rather than subsidizing heat pumps, perhaps the PM would have been better pushing the billions of pounds he is pledging to find for his greening initiative into making insulation cheaper, setting higher build standards for new homes, and then showing people how capitalism – disguised as paying less for energy – could make a lasting different to their home, their money and the Planeta. Downtown in Business
