A Government review is recommending that households should receive a score based on how energy efficient they are and that homeowners who refuse to install heat pumps could see their properties fall in value.
According to The Telegraph:
A “root and branch” review of how Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are calculated will boost the scores of households that use heat pumps, remote-controlled thermostats and other eco inventions backed by ministers.
The system, which will be in place by 2025, is designed to reflect the Government’s commitment to decarbonising homes as part of its Net Zero drive.
But it may also mean that those who do not adopt green technology in their homes will receive a lower score, which can reduce the value of a property or make it more difficult to rent out.
Landlords have already been told that properties with a rating of less than “C” will be illegal to lease after 2027, while mortgage lenders have offered preferential rates to those buying houses rated “A” or “B”.
The latest move to change the calculations behind EPCs could force homeowners to adopt home energy alterations, or face a costly downgrade.
The Building Research Establishment, which is conducting the review, said the new system would be “better suited to modern and dynamic technologies which will help decarbonise the UK’s housing stock, such as heat pumps, renewables, storage technologies and smart control devices”.
It will also be used in the Future Homes Standard, which mandates that new homes built from 2025 must have low-carbon heating systems installed.
But despite a recent VAT cut on heat pumps, solar panels and other home renovations in Rishi Sunak’s Spring Statement, trade bodies have warned it is still prohibitively expensive to convert all but the best-insulated homes.
Air source heat pumps, which produce energy by extracting air from outside a property and blowing it across refrigerant liquid, cost £10,855 per property on average, versus £1,400 for a replacement gas boiler.
Households that install the systems typically pay less in energy bills, but the savings are not enough to recoup the original cost of installation, according to the Energy & Utilities Alliance.
Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay who chair’s the party’s Net Zero Scrutiny Group, told The Telegraph that this is “statism gone mad.” He went on to say:
“This is ‘nudge factor’ on steroids, towards certain technologies that are unproven, unpopular and don’t work very well. I would recommend they leave it alone and wait for technologies that people actually want to come forward, rather than frightening the mortgage, rental and domestic property markets, which it looks to me that this is likely to do.”
It is indeed statism. It’s also social crediting. Your home will be assigned a score based on how energy efficient it is, but that’s just for starters. Eventually, you and I will be assigned a score too.
The late great Jim Marrs told me many years ago, that the introduction of credit scores – to allow a lender assess the probability that the loanee would pay them back – was really about programming us to accept the concept of being scored.
Jim never used the term social crediting, but he did warn of a day when each of us would be assessed based on how good a citizen we were.
How I miss him.
