Electric Heating
Welcome to Electric Heating: The Energy Efficiency Podcast – episode 6, the podcast that brings you a mix of energy efficiency news, products and tips all year round. We’re interested in profiling people and products involved in promoting energy efficiency habits, products and information, so please do get in touch if you have something to contribute.
Carbon capture machinery at a coal mine
Before we get on with our advertised features, we looked recently at the role of carbon capture in helping the UK achieve Theresa May’s net zero target. Carbon capture traps carbon as it’s produced, preventing it entering the atmosphere. The carbon can then be used to create chemicals required by industries including food (mm) and medicine. Last week, a division of the Indian-owned company Tata announced a new carbon capture project, the UK’s biggest, through a plant in Cheshire. It expects to prevent 40,000 tonnes of carbon entering the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of removing about 20,000 cars (what type of cars?) from the roads.
The plans are backed by the British government, which is contributing about a quarter of the £16m cost through a grant. An existing carbon capture trial at the Drax power plant in Yorkshire will receive a £5m boost, aimed at keeping 16m tonnes of carbon from the air by the mid-2020s. The government is helping to support nine carbon capture projects and supporting the development of a net zero industrial cluster in the UK by 2040.
The Tata project intends to use the removed carbon to create a high grade liquid carbon dioxide, used in creating baking soda. Sodium bicarbonate is used by pharmaceutical companies to make products including indigestion remedies and eye drops. Tata is the only company in the UK making sodium carbonate, which is used in detergent and glass manufacture. As Martin Ashcroft, head of Tata Chemicals Europe, points out, this carbon capture project helps Tata ensure a good supply of essential materials.
Tata is an enormous company with interests in many sectors. It owns one of India’s biggest energy companies, and has pledged to end investment in fossil fuel energy plants to focus on renewables instead. Realistically, it is behemoths such as Tata that have the influence and financial muscle to make changes the ordinary person can’t effect, so let’s hope that where Tata leads, on these issues at least, others will follow.
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Electric heating
Last week we looked at gas heating, concluding that although it is cheaper per unit than electric heating and emits less CO2 than almost any other form of heating, it’s expensive and disruptive to install, an inherently risky material and, of course, a fossil fuel. Much natural gas production comes from fracking, particularly in the USA, which is widely accepted to be an environmental disaster.
White electric radiator
In the UK, many houses that aren’t connected to the gas network instead use electric heating. About 4m households here don’t have access to gas, and of these about half use electric heating, so at two million households that’s a noticeable minority. Of these two million or so households, the vast majority use night storage heaters with the rest using plug-in fan heaters. A small minority of less than 100,000 households use heat pumps, which need electricity to run but are a whole subject in their own right and will be profiled next week.
Is it really more expensive?
Electric heating is more common in flats than houses, and homes using it tend to have a lower energy efficiency rating with the occupants on lower incomes, directly leading to fuel poverty. A report from Ofgem, Insights Paper on Households with Electric and Other Non-Gas heating, goes into deep but quite interesting detail on the demographics of electric heating customers, and how things will probably become worse for them financially over the next few years as tariffs and benefits become unba
