In Germany, we have such manipulators in government. The former Greens-Social Democratic coalition made a law change to foster installation of heat pumps, and phasing out new gas heating installations. It would also give a rising share of energy costs to landlords which keep using antiquated fossil energy to avoid the investment, thereby making life easier for people who rent flats. The goverments would also subsidize upgrades to heat pumps with cheap credits from KfW, and generous grandfathering clauses for elderly home owners.
That was met with a massive disinformation campaign by the conservatives, the yellow press, the far right, and so on. All working purely for the interests of the fossil industry.
And that campaign was also probably one of the main reasons why the Greens/Social Democrat coalition lost the last election to a party of Trump ass lickers.
The fossil industry is an enemy of mankind, and an enemy of European democracy.
It’s so crazy since heat pumps are such an easily proven direct benefit to a persons wallet.
Oh, you are cute. Germany is far ahead in the game of institutional corruption. You just need to change laws and regulations accordingly and make sure to turn a blind eye on price rigging… so heat pumps become a luxury for those who can and want to afford it.
My “favourite” bit of boomer talk in that regard is: “But if it gets seriously cold, you’ll freeze.” Heat pumps work better with higher temperature differences, numbnut. Similarly with EVs. If low temperatures are such an issue, why do Norwegians almost exclusively buy electric?
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. When the temperature drops below about -20°C, our heat pump stops working and the system switches over automatically to pure electric heat. It makes our electricity bill triple. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen very often.
The craziest thing for me is how some people cling to propaganda, even when it doesn’t match their lived reality.
A friend of mine still insists that electric cars are [insert any cliché you know], and that they can’t make it up a hill once the battery is even slightly drained.
…
We’ve been on several road trips in an electric car.
With four dogs in a trailer.
All across Germany and even the Czech Republic.
And we (another friend who owns the electric road-trip car and me with my “city”-car) charge it at home, where we have a solar system and a heat pump.
And yet, every now and then “this can’t work”. The dissonance is real.
In theory yes, but the fossil fuel industry has set up elaborate to make that not true.
For example, when switching from mostly-gas powered district heating to a heat pump, I had to pay several thousand euros to get it disconnected. It was literally a guy coming over for 10 minutes.
My district heating is also cheap per GJ, but very expensive per month, meaning it barely pays to use less. So I couldn’t JUST switch to heat pump heating and keep the hot tapwater, because that’s a financially terrible move. So I had to have an entire hot water system installed as well, costing even more money. And I was lucky enough my attic could hold a boiler, most can’t.
Now, I have that money, but the barriers in place are very high against it.
So yes, per joule of heat, it’s much cheaper. But in practice, they make it very expensive.
Though heat pumps are still quite expensive in Germany. An installation for a single-family home including solar panels and battery can easily cost North of 30,000 EUR, which is up to three times the cost of the hardware. In theory, it should be a gigantic business opportunity to provide heat pump installation services there from Danish, Netherlands, or Polish companies.
A reasonable sized solar power system with around 10kWp and 10kWh battery costs at least 16k€ in Germany when done by a professional. Depending on your power consumption in general this can be a bad investment even with a heat pump. Therefore I would separate this from the costs of a hwat pump, since it is not strictly required. Especially since you can get energy plans selling power for ~26ct/kWh.
Ridiculously expensive when you compare to the prices of balcony solar systems which are just plugged intoa wall socket.
