If you look at the government’s draft Heat and Energy Saving Strategy you’ll see that a big focus is finding clever ways of financing what are called “deep refurbs” including all kinds of new insulation and heating kit, to make sure that the heating load is very low and the supply is very efficient. At the moment this treatment typically takes 15-20 years to pay back, hence you need more clever finance vehicles like tying the cost to the house and taking it out with small additions to energy bills (called Pay As You Save).

Well it isn’t easy, but councils already receive ringfenced and un-ringfenced funding for house renovation grants and to promote business (LABGI). Combining the LABGI with some of the renovation funding and with some external funding, and you could make a local scrappage scheme. My council works with the owners of empty properties who don’t have the funds to repair them. The council pays to renovate them, then rents them out using part of the rent to repay the repair costs – everyone’s a winner, the homeless are housed, the houseowner gets an income and repaired house which is now a valuable asset. We could amend the system so that any boiler less than ‘A’ rated is replaced as part of the deal.

Whilst it’s going to be hard to fund a local scheme the benefits of even a limited scheme are so huge, we really need to try.

The repayment time on solar water heating was even longer, but I wonder whether supplementing the aging boiler with solar would have worked out better.

I suspect our big fuel use (and so emissions source) is heating, not hot water, and current solar systems offered to me didn’t seem to help with that because there’s no sun when heating is most often needed and they don’t store enough heat for long enough.

Why do the economics of this not stack up yet? Is there going to be a more dramatic change in the near future? Any cool central heating changes on the horizon?