Landlord epc min c scrapped

[joe90]

27 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

What makes you think they’ll take any notice?

 

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-climate-envoy-says-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-unrealistic-2023-09-22/

 

Adapting to possible future climate change is what we should be doing alongside efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It’s clear there’s no joined up thinking going on and even in the best case scenario carbon emissions on a global level will be well above net zero for many decades yet. It’s fantasy to think otherwise. 

So, saying if they do nothing we won’t do anything is not going to benefit anyone anywhere 🤷‍♂️. I agree that we need to adapt to change, Monty Dan ( tv gardener) for example says we should plant for a hotter dryer climate and not water plants so often. If we all do a little bit we all benefit.

[Mattg4321]

I’m not advocating doing nothing, but expect global emissions to carry on rising for a good while yet. Believing we can somehow influence that from our small island is borderline narcissistic. That’s not to say it’s not a laudable thing to try and do. 

 

It seems to make a lot of people feel better about themselves if they buy an EV or fit some PV panels, but these things will make no difference imo. Keeping an old diesel car running a while longer probably results in less carbon emissions than a new EV every 3 or 4 years, which some seem to regard as going green!!

 

 

[SteamyTea]

3 hours ago, joe90 said:

Monty Dan ( tv gardener) for example says we should plant for a hotter dryer climate and not water plants so often.

How does that deal with flooding events which are another company consequence of climate change. Let alone sever cold weather events.

I was at a climate conference about 15 years ago, the council's 'climate expert' showed us all a chart of future monthly temperatures.

The stupid twat had just added 2⁰C to the then current monthly mean temperatures.

Climate change, caused by increased global temperatures will mean more variation in the weather, some will be extreme for any location. 

The big impact is going to be with agriculture, there is not going to be enough local knowledge about how to farm areas that are not currently farmed, and the infrastructure will not be there to help. And there is now currently not enough time to develope new, large scale farming areas without causing secondary problems. We have seen what developing palm oil plantations has done in the Far East, and what cattle ranches have done in Brazil and Argentina to the Amazon basin. Let alone what happened to the American Mid West which was over developed rapidly.

This is why we just have to transition to RE as fast as we can. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by SteamyTea

[joe90]

35 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

How does that deal with flooding events which are another company consequence of climate change. Let alone sever cold weather events.

 

It doesn’t, and that’s not what I said 

4 hours ago, joe90 said:

. I agree that we need to adapt to change,

That’s what I said.

37 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

This is why we just have to transition to RE as fast as we can. 

I agree 👍

3 hours ago, Mattg4321 said:

Keeping an old diesel car running a while longer probably results in less carbon emissions than a new EV every 3 or 4 years, which some seem to regard as going green!!

I agree, which is why I am keeping my old (13 year) diesel car running. I cannot afford an EV and I am not convinced digging up rare earth materials by third world peoples is fair to anyone. 🤷‍♂️

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, Mattg4321 said:

Keeping an old diesel car running a while longer probably results in less carbon emissions than a new EV every 3 or 4 years

How about keeping an EV for 20 years.

The first owner of a car, of any sort, does not have to be the last, there is a large second hand market in used cars.

In fact, the sale of new cars via personal finance deals is based on the second hand value.

[Mattg4321]

Just now, SteamyTea said:

How about keeping an EV for 20 years.

The first owner of a car, of any sort, does not have to be the last, there is a large second hand market in used cars.

In fact, the sale of new cars via personal finance deals is based on the second hand value.

You might be onto something there, but nobody in any position of authority is advocating keeping cars for longer than the current average. I suspect they’d rather we kept changing every 3 or 4 years. 
 

There’s also the issue of battery longevity, which has yet to really come to the fore. We’ll see how that plays out over the next few years. 

[SteamyTea]

9 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

 

There’s also the issue of battery longevity, which has yet to really come to the fore. We’ll see how that plays out over the next few years. 

Some of the smaller, early cars have problems.  This may be down to lack of understanding on the owners behalf i.e. driving them to the limit (which with the original Zoe or Leaf was pretty low performance) and over reliance of fast charging.

I am sure that if I bought a Hyundai i10 and drove it flat out for a couple of years, it would not last another 2 years, whoever owned it.

One of the hidden environmental costs of ICE vehicles is the serving and repair side.  There are literally thousands of businesses that repair cars.  It is the nature of ICE vehicles that they need routine service and maintenance.  Each business has an environmental footprint.

BEVs have less need for routine serving as it is going to be carried out in a totally different manner i.e. a man in a van turns up with the vehicles reports a problem, not just when the clock hits a number.

 

Coming up with spurious reasons why not to have an EV is not going to change anything, we are heading down that path, globally, so why fight it.

Edited September 23, 2023 by SteamyTea

[Marvin]

6 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

There’s also the issue of battery longevity, which has yet to really come to the fore. We’ll see how that plays out over the next few years. 

Very true. Our batteries I think are guaranteed for 80,000. I think the battery replacement cost is about £12,000 at present....

 

Our other car is one I bought new 15 years ago and would have cost about 9k in todays money.

[Marvin]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

One of the hidden environmental costs of ICE vehicles is the serving and repair side.

Yes our EV needs little work. However the tyres wear out quicker and have to be different to allow for the resistance to turning caused when going down hill and charging the battery...

[Marvin]

4 hours ago, Mattg4321 said:

Keeping an old diesel car running a while longer probably results in less carbon emissions than a new EV every 3 or 4 years, which some seem to regard as going green!!

Well this for us, has been as a result of improvements in new models. We found, even only going a low milage each year, 140-170 mile range was not enough. The newer model has a range between 240-300miles. Because when parked at home we leave it plugged in to a 13amp charger (2.5kW?) which only charges when the PV produces over 3kW during summer or 2.5kW in the winter  we now find we rarely have to override this and charge from the mains.  We also found in the winter that we often have a couple of sunny days in a row and the new EV will store up enough to last a week. So far this year we have charged via mains during 1 week when in Devon and about 6 other times. Its our mobile battery store.

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, Marvin said:

140-170 mile range was not enough.

You need to drive a couple more times around the island before you start to get dizzy.

Or drive it faster.

I suspect I drive further for a coffee than you can.

Edited September 23, 2023 by SteamyTea

[AliG]

Getting back to the original topic of C rated EPCs.

 

As just discussed, we largely have the roadmap for the decarbonisation of transport. As EVs continue to improve and fall in price, the existing fleet of vehicles will become electric. Simultaneously the carbon mix in electricity generation is falling and so emissions from transport will fall. There will continue to be edge cases but solutions for these will be found over time - synthetic fuels for example. This is actually just another way of moving things to being electrical as electricity is used to produce these fuels.

 

With so much having been done to get the ball rolling here, we are now moving onto building energy use. The majority of this is for heating, lighting use has already collapsed with LED lights. As you can see below, we were encouraged to use gas boilers in the UK, but with the decarbonisation of electricity production, ASHPs and even resistive heating are now lower carbon options.

 

I suspect that the reason for the C EPC target is that houses probably have to be at least in this area for to to be possible for them to be heated by ASHPs. Rentals will have been chosen as they turn over faster than owner occupied houses and forcing landlords to make changes is less of a vote loser than forcing owners to make changes.

 

The problem of political expediency in delaying these changes is evident recently. If we are to achievement zero targets these things need to happen.

 

I have noted China being mentioned quite a few times, with the "whataboutery" of we shouldn't bother because of their emissions. This has a lot of problems for me. There is a lot of dishonesty in outsourcing our manufacturing to China then crowing that we have reduced emissions and their's have increased. It would be more correct in many cases to reallocate the emissions to the end consumers. Then of course there is comparing absolute emissions to emissions per capita. China is around 50% of US levels, although it is above UK levels already (again though should we adjust ours up and theirs down for all the goods we import from China).

 

However, this is largely irrelevant now, because China is has also set net zero targets. They have a target for emissions to peak around 2030 and from what I read they are on track to beat this. They have already hit around 25% EV penetration. This year China is adding wind power capacity roughly equal to new thermal capacity and roughly three times as much solar capacity. They like everyone else can see that these are now the cheapest sources of power so it is a pretty easy decision.

 

Electricity demand globally is expected to roughly double or triple by 2050. See this Mckinsey report https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/oil-and-gas/our-insights/global-energy-perspective-2022. As almost all new capacity being added is in renewables then by 2050 that alone would get us to 2/3 renewables. Of course almost all decommissioned capacity is also replaced by renewables so the vast majority of electricity production will be carbon free by 2050. Hence why we want to move transport and heating to being electrical as this will make them also carbon free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FuerteStu]

13 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

 

Wealth and Income are not the same thing.

Therein is the proof of the scandal.. 

 

According to statistics, incomes for the very wealthy haven't grown that much, yet their relative wealth has. 

 

Where has the money come from we ask.... 

 

[SteamyTea]

10 minutes ago, FuerteStu said:

Where has the money come from we ask

Government policy.

Quantitative easing, government debt, interest rates, planning rules, low inflation rates (until recently), minimum wage (caused middle income jobs to become cheaper, boosting corporate profits).

The country has been awash with cash for nearly 15 years.

 

We are going to start paying for it now though.

Edited September 23, 2023 by SteamyTea

[AliG]

1 hour ago, FuerteStu said:

 

Where has the money come from we ask.... 

The richest people make most of their wealth from the increasing value of Investments, not income.

 

This is only taxed if you sell the investments but it’s pretty much impossible to spend billions so they just sit on them.

 

Looking at a lot of the data the 1% haven’t been getting much wealthier it is the 0.1% or even the 0.01%. These are mainly business owners.

 

As @SteamyTea says many things have helped them get richer recently. However inflation, wage rises and poor stock market returns will probably erode a bit of this over the next few years.

 

The amount of money someone can accumulate today from a few good ideas such as Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg has become quite absurd. It’s not clear to me what can be done about it. These people will claim to be smart and hard working, which they usually are. But lots of people are smart and hard working and aren’t billionaires. What they almost always are is smarter and harder working than politicians. If only we could somehow harness this ingenuity to run the country.

 

The US dats here on increasing wealth of the wealthiest is more extreme than the UK. The US has very generous treatment of capital gains and inheritance tax as well as many of the most valuable new businesses.

 

[Mike]

On 21/09/2023 at 14:15, Pocster said:

If forced to upgrade to a C and it’s too expensive only option is to sell . How many properties would suddenly come on the market ?

That's already happening in France. For over a year it's been illegal to start to rent most properties rated below below E, and illegal to increase the rents of those already let. As a result, the value of poorly insulated property is falling, and more properties are being sold because the current owner doesn't want to upgrade.

 

Between September 2019 & October 2020, the number of properties rated E, F or G going to market went up by 10% to 74% depending on the region. And G rated properties sold for between 5% and 15% less, depending on the region.

 

Unlike the UK, various loans and tax-breaks are on offer to help landlords upgrade (though not for DIY upgrades), and there are now buy-upgrade-rent investors taking advantage of the lower prices and the financial incentives.

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by Mike