the rats are leaving the sinking ship (and a haiku)

'eggs. there and back again. 1 mile.

is that a haiku?' -  co-operatively authored poem.

'chickens escaped again?'  contributed a friend.

perhaps,

'eggs. there and back again. 1 mile.

chickens escaped again'

is a better poem. 

nothing much happening on the diary front

the rats are leaving the sinking ship. the ravens are leaving the tower. and tim montgomerie is leaving the tories.

tim montgomerie is leaving the tories for reform.

who is tim montgomerie? the founder of the conservative home forum. a pundit frequently on tv and mainstream media. a kind of super-activist ('one of the most important conservative activists of the past 20 years').

the other tory to reform jumpers (lee anderson, andrea jenkyns) are small beer in comparison. chancers who bring nothing to the party. deadweight. 

it's the morning. a greyish morning. no rain until this afternoon though (allegedly).

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let us return our thoughts to decarbonisation

the insulating social housing up to an EPC C standard with little over-performance doesn't really accomplish it because people will still be heating with gas (mostly). it is just that they will either be heating less (a little decarbonisation) or perhaps even heating their houses more (thus alleviating their fuel poverty).  similarly with solar panels (because people on the whole don't tend to heat with the electricity that solar panels generate in winter).

the way forward to decarbonisation is to replace gas combi boilers with air source heat pumps at scale having insulated the properties up to a nice low 90kwh/m2/year heating requirement, at this level the heat pump should not be more expensive to run that gas central heating (er. in an EPC D house).

the current government scheme does not do this having prioritised getting numbers of properties up to a bare EPC C standard. 

of course these calculations are based on the current disparity between gas and electricity costs per kwh of heat. but of course this disparity could change. smart meters combined with batteries allow people to take advantage of differential pricing - buying electricity when it is cheap. however this means that customers without batteries are forced to buy at more expensive 'peak' times.  

but then we get into capacity problems of the national electricity grid. the wind generation is in the north (off the coast of scotland) the majority of the population is in the south east (where the uk's unipolar development strategy concentrates them). if you are heating entirely with electricity then electricity usage will at least double (even with heat pumps) and all this has to be transmitted down from scotland. 

one way to ameliorate this problem is to increase the amount of solar (and whisper it wind) generation in the south east. 

so where were we? 

horsemouth thinks the government is correct - fabric first insulation measures first. he then expects that people will want solar panels next (not because they've made a detailed cost-benefit analysis but because the idea is just nicer) and if they want solar panels they will probably want batteries (because they won't want to be giving away all that nicely generated solar power on a sunny day for free). finally people will be persuadable to having heat pumps fitted. 

the all property up to an EPC C deadline for social housing is in 2030. 

horsemouth expects this to be missed by many of the larger social housing organisations whose rental income was mercilessly scalped by the government a few years ago. he expects it to be missed by many of the smaller social housing organisations who simply lack the resources and experience to comply with it. 

and again horsemouth catastrophises and imagines the sheer amount of conflict within the communal endeavour that all these change will produce. but perhaps he's wrong and it will be all plain(ish) sailing. 

of course the technological fix aspect of decarbonisation is in many ways bargaining. the thing science and technology is good at is creating technological fixes but whether these will effectively reduce the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in a timely enough fashion is a moot point. these measures are deployed within the structure of capitalism and in line with its aims also.

it simply might not be sufficiently profitable to save the world (ameliorate the effects of climate crisis such that humanity survives). in any event climate crisis is likely to render much of the globe essentially uninhabitable and ruin food security globally. 

the belief must be (for the super rich) that there are places where they can go where they will be safe and insulated from the consequences of world system collapse.