2021-06-03
"German government warns of dangerous water pollution and public health threat from heat pumps""
The latest press release from the Global Warming Policy Forum draws attention to a study by the German Federal Environment Agency that has identified the threat from refrigerants used in such devices as air conditioners and heat pumps leaking into the atmosphere, leading to contamination of groundwater supplies.
European governments have already established their propensity to make a bad situation worse (think diesel fuel for cars) through not doing their due diligence and running a full health and safety assessment on the proposed course of action before mandating it on the public. Whilst it appears that the German government may have learned its lesson, it is probably no surprise (given our own government's hapless response to the pandemic) that it is poised to rerun the same mistake in its headlong rush to "build back better" by replacing gas boilers with heat pumps.
The German report helpfully suggests the use of alternative refrigerants but these too have significant drawbacks (poisonous and inflammable) so it seems that more investigation is needed.
Will anybody in our political classes take heed?
As we report elsewhere Steve Baker MP is doing his bit to draw attention to the impracticable aspects of heat pump policy when it comes to replacing gas boilers, and it has to be said that other options such as the use of hydrogen gas seem intuitively more likely as effective replacements and should be properly investigated rather than being tacked-on to the heat-pump narrative in a futile attempt to make this dodo fly.
Before many billions more are wasted on foisting a flavour-of-the-day technology on a public that has had no effective say in the matter, perhaps the government should take a step back and devise a scheme whereby market forces would be encouraged to play their part in giving the public a sensible element of choice about the way forward?
