online meeting done bin walked down the drive horsemouth goes to deliver the eggs 'at the crossroads'

'it will take two decades to fix the housing crisis, and I fear it’s going to get worse before it gets better.' 

- rick de blaby, chief executive of get living.

so what did horsemouth learn in his online meeting then?

that  decarbonisation is being prioritised for home owners - why? 

because they have the money to do it. 

the money to decarbonise social housing simply isn't there (yet), either in government, in local authorities or in the willingness of the financial system to loan it out.

there is (of course) a conflict in some ways between the need to address decarbonisation and the need to address fuel poverty. 

what would our typical user on a prepayment meter make of the need to run an air source heat pump constantly to achieve maximum efficiency? the truth is that many people do not heat their homes adequately or even at all because they cannot afford to do so, and with rents increasing by an average of 9% this year and wages and benefits not matching this people are going to continue getting poorer in real terms. 

and the next two decades will be the decades of the housing crisis (as even the robber baron developers will tell you). 

to be in fuel poverty is defined as having less than £36k combined income per household per year (and typical gas and electricity bills). so, for the communal endeavour, if there are 4 people in a shared house they might not be in fuel poverty if they all earn as little as £9k a year. 

the EPC (energy performance certificate) rating and survey has two separate scales, one for energy performance and one for carbon emissions,  the government introduced the certificates in light of concerns about energy efficiency and fuel poverty and is now retroactively using them to diagnose more complicated issues relating to decarbonisation. 

tariffs are a big thing now that we have come out of the government price cap - if a combination of smart meters, batteries  and agile tariffs can get the price of your electricity down from 27p a kwh to 9p a kwh and at this price point many strange things become possible - heating with electricity for example at a similar price to heating with gas but with no CO2 created in the generation of the electricity. 

but of course there are no guarantees tariffs for electricity are going to stay low - particularly with the expansion of the grid that will be needed to deliver that additional juice. further the high interest rates we are currently experiencing (and are likely to experience for a while) and the high rate of cost inflation (in building materials for example) makes decarbonisation mare expensive and slows it down.

he must have a chat with his brother's eldest joe (who knows all about these things). 

so far for all the cheerful stuff.

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here in the countryside it is a bright sunshiney day (storms later apparently). yesterday was surprisingly good. horsemouth did some weeding down in the bottom garden. he did the tasks and he went for walks. 

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