I work at a factory that makes components for electric vehicles, and also sells some stuff to defense contractors on the side. Two years ago, the Trump Administration completely fucked over my company by threatening previously-guaranteed CHIPS money and magically deleting Inflation Reduction Act measures intended to encourage adoption of EVs. Our demand dropped like a rock, we laid off 80% of our workforce, raises got frozen, equity turned to dust, etc. Then the US did Israel’s bidding and started this asinine war with Iran. For a month there was nothing. Then the defense orders came trickling in. Then we couldn’t keep those tools running fast enough. Finally, two months later, the EV stuff showed up like a flash flood in the Grand Canyon. Insane we were almost bankrupted by his stupidity, then saved by it. For my part, I’m going to try to upgrade my gas furnace to a heat pump before it gets cold.
Christ I wish housing wasn’t so fucked in the UK. The odds of my landlord replacing the ancient gas boiler with a heat pump is nil, not when we’re still fitting millions of new gas boilers, even to the few new builds that make it through planning ffs. Even if I owned my house a heat pump might not be feasible for various reasons, many of them down to our housing stock just being totally naff in various ways.
Don’t get me wrong the Russians love to exaggerate our problems, but the best thing we can do to fuck the Kremlin over is getting the natural gas needle out of our collective arms which we’re just not that interested in doing. Sure the grid is decarbonising but the majority of heating is still natural gas, and the grid can’t be upgraded to fix this due to our genuine economic self-harm of discretionary planning where bored retirees and self-interested QUANGOs can delay everything to the point of non-viability.
Are photovoltaics an option for you? I can buy a pallet of 32 of them for about $5k and from what I understand, this is despite hefty tariffs. They’re approaching impulse buy territory. That said, I’m capable of installing them myself, which is a big part of the cost for most installations.
I work at a factory that makes components for electric vehicles, and also sells some stuff to defense contractors on the side. Two years ago, the Trump Administration completely fucked over my company by threatening previously-guaranteed CHIPS money and magically deleting Inflation Reduction Act measures intended to encourage adoption of EVs. Our demand dropped like a rock, we laid off 80% of our workforce, raises got frozen, equity turned to dust, etc. Then the US did Israel’s bidding and started this asinine war with Iran. For a month there was nothing. Then the defense orders came trickling in. Then we couldn’t keep those tools running fast enough. Finally, two months later, the EV stuff showed up like a flash flood in the Grand Canyon. Insane we were almost bankrupted by his stupidity, then saved by it. For my part, I’m going to try to upgrade my gas furnace to a heat pump before it gets cold.
Christ I wish housing wasn’t so fucked in the UK. The odds of my landlord replacing the ancient gas boiler with a heat pump is nil, not when we’re still fitting millions of new gas boilers, even to the few new builds that make it through planning ffs. Even if I owned my house a heat pump might not be feasible for various reasons, many of them down to our housing stock just being totally naff in various ways.
Don’t get me wrong the Russians love to exaggerate our problems, but the best thing we can do to fuck the Kremlin over is getting the natural gas needle out of our collective arms which we’re just not that interested in doing. Sure the grid is decarbonising but the majority of heating is still natural gas, and the grid can’t be upgraded to fix this due to our genuine economic self-harm of discretionary planning where bored retirees and self-interested QUANGOs can delay everything to the point of non-viability.
Are photovoltaics an option for you? I can buy a pallet of 32 of them for about $5k and from what I understand, this is despite hefty tariffs. They’re approaching impulse buy territory. That said, I’m capable of installing them myself, which is a big part of the cost for most installations.
Probably not, I’m renting and I doubt I can convince the landlord!