No Gas boilers in New homes after 2025

Cliff

www.cityam.com/274624/no-gas-boilers-new-british-homes-after-2025-chancellor

The plan is to build homes with extra insulation and no gas main... Is this practical?
The aim of course to reduce carbon emissions, which will work if the power is coming from a wind farm or solar.

But during cold winters quite a lot of energy is needed to heat a house. We will switch to electricity driving heat pumps I suppose. Either ground heat or air.

On paper an air heat pump may use 1 kw of electricity and pump out 3 kw of heat (for example) but the price per kwh is 3 to 4 times the price of gas and cosy radiators..
It could be expensive for householders.

Synchro

Seems like its ill thought out to me.  Storage heaters are such a PITA, but would need to be considered.

Over by there

I upgraded my attic insulation seeing as the builders put in less than required for the year built, it has made a noticeable difference.

There is a house at an experimental energy place near me that says it can be done. It generates more than it uses.

DOBLY

Gas has been, and will continue to be for some time, a (fairly) cheap, (fairly) clean fuel to heat Britain's homes and hot water.  But it is not as clean as some other fuels, and the supply is not endless.  
By improving the construction standards around insulation (including triple glazing) and airtightness, new build houses should require less energy inputs, and therefore should cost much less to heat than past and indeed current houses.  Add to that the greater efficiency of heat pumps and other technologies, and the need for gas as a fuel to heat houses and water is removed.  This has the upside of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Technologies such as solar panels or tiles should be able to produce enough "free" electricity to power a domestic scale heat pump (and some of the rest of a households needs) for most of the year - add in a storage system for excess electricity & / or hot water and the load on grid electricity should be much reduced.
Alternatively, the insulating properties of a green (planted) roof should reduce the need for as much heating / cooling as a standard roof.

Over by there

Problem is that will be for new stock, unless they are knocking older houses down (new for today and older), gas will certainly be needed until that stock is replaced.

I can see the benefits for new, but how long until it makes a dent? (not saying nay, rather want to know timescales).

My insulation has made an impact, replaced window seals as they were leaking. There are perhaps one or two more things I can realistically do to my 18 year old house, more importantly, affordable things. Past that I will still need gas.

Over by there

The house I mentioned earlier at the experimental site.
Cardiff University
The other question for such a building is the on going cost to maintain tech and what happens at sale time.

DOBLY

^^ North Sea (and other fields around the UK) gas will last at least another 25 years, plus there is an interconnect from Europe and Russia, so no supply worries.  
Older houses are constantly replaced - the issue is that in the UK this tends to happen a long time after they are well past being state of art, and large numbers in the same area at the same time.
As you have found out, houses built to the building code only a relatively short time ago are not efficient enough - if the code had been stricter 20 years ago, you could have save a heap of energy, money and emissions in the time that you have had the house...

Over by there

Of course I could have had better energy stuff. However the builders of mine, a well know builder, used Friday afternoon attitude trades and parts from the cheapest supplier for what should have been a reasonable house, council sign off was probably through binoculars looking the other way. They did not even meet the code for the year the house was built. Every minor project, I have to plan for the follow up sort out as they fudged the whole thing.

Which is worrying for hi tech homes.

Not being the original buyer I could not take it up with them and had run ins with the guarantee firm before.

DOBLY

This is where
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) graphs
View EE Rating for this propertyView EI Rating for this propertyshould assist the buyer in making an informed decision about what it will cost to run a home.
Great in theory, less so in practice...

Over by there

Last time I moved, any of that was not in place. I hope there is a good way to verify they are correctly carried out.

e.g. our house does not have cavity wall insulation, though the house fell within the years where it should have happened but apparently we are in a driving rain area and it could be omitted.