A historic turning point for clean heating in Europe: For the first time, in the first half of 2025 sales of heat pumps in Germany have surpassed those of gas boilers. This is a big milestone, demonstrating that the transition away from fossil fuels in our buildings is not just a future ambition.

An excellent positive article about the modern wonder that is the energy transition

Sooo... the government has removed the 1m planning rule in England, and the BBC have opened the comments section on their article...😱😳 Because I clearly hate myself, let's do a quick fact check on some of the most popular comments... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

There’s also a good case study on how a heat pump and batteries make my ‘thermally-challenged’ listed house cost-effective to run.

Pinchbeck acknowledges debate over cost of net zero. Says there is investment and cost required over the next 10 years, especially in grid and home retrofit, but the modelling shows benefits start to outweigh costs around 2040 and then continue to amass beyond then.

Pinchbeck: 'Apart from EVs if there is a key technology in the Carbon budgets it is trees, because it takes 25 years to grow a tree to maturity.' Says if there are two things the government needs progress on now it is buildings and trees.

Other key challenge is residential buildings and electrified heat. There needs to be more progress here to get to half of buildings having electrified heat by mid-2030s before then ramping up through to 2040.

Pinchbeck: 'Our primary recommendation for government is to make electricity as cheap as possible'. This relates to the major challenge for this government of decarbonising heating over the next decade.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/defenc... I wrote a defence of the new Net Zero Building Standard. There's a bit too much focus in the industry on perfecting ideas and not enough on doing things better....

Best explanation of why energy prices are so high in the UK you will find in the media. Watch this ⬇️ (Spoiler alert: it’s not green policies that are the problem)

BBC muzzling one of its best presenters from making an excellent, wholly factual programme because heat pumps are “controversial”. An organisation badly in need of new leadership.

An Easter Duckling

Thanks @betatalk.bsky.social for a great chat. We covered a lot of ground from low energy sports centre design to the benefits of (MCS) certification despite the pain it causes.

It seems to me that most of the harmful political acts of the last decade have come about because no one wants to explain the benefits of very important but unpopular things. Like the EU, legal aid and foreign aid. It would be nice if politicians actually led sometimes.

Some thoughts on the increase in energy bills under the price cap from April... 1. This is obviously bad news. We hoped that energy bills would gradually fall back to normal after the 2022 crisis, but we seem to have a new normal with bills now ~£700-£800 higher. www.ofgem.gov.uk/news/changes...

New personal post: is net zero good or bad for growth? This is a long post on a tricky topic, so this is a thread too. I wrote it because people are making strong claims about net zero without really paying attention to the facts. And the facts keep changing acjsissons.medium.com/is-net-zero-...

That couple think pylons look so ‘monstrous’ that they… built a scale model of one and stored it in their house?

Bloke wars: the rise of the Net Zero Dad www.economist.com/britain/2025...

This is the content I’m here for…

Nice, though raise you the folks with online heat pump monitoring. Look at the SCOP on that eh?

I have made the definitive* typology of Dads. How to tell your Centrist Dads from your 6 Music Dads from your Climate and Net Zero Dads…

I like lots of @dsquareddigest.bsky.social stuff. But I think I liked this the most.

Very good by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social on how regulation can be used to drive growth. If course, does depend on regulators having the budgets, skills and staff to do the job properly open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...

Grid reliability isn’t homeowners’ responsibility. It should have no impact on your personal decision to electrify. If you wanted to buy an AC or hot tub, nobody argues with you about the grid. It’s an anti-heat pump talking point — try it as such.

"More solar leads to more coal in China." This is true in the short term, but even then the effect is much less emissions. Long term we will produce solar with solar and the effect is no emissions. I suspect this hand wringing is often by people who can't see the forest for the trees.

A different way to put it: a little coal in China to produce solar goes a long way to reducing coal everywhere. And I was the first one to produce this hopeful chart, but I'm happy Carbon Brief and the Economist copied the design, (although the economist still needs to update to remove errors).

The older I get, the less tolerant I am of impenetrable academic prose. When I read architectural research papers that aren’t in plain English I become suspicious that the complexity of the writing is obscuring a flimsy argument.

Sure it was a great game but check out the heat pump company advertising during the interviews

Air Source Heat Pump featured as selling point in Guardian today money section. Might have to wait some years but we need gas boilers to start being seen as a liability - like a leaky roof - on a house survey. #Energysky #Heatpumps

Love the idea of holons. This is a much more compelling and workable vision of local energy networks than the GLA’s ongoing fixation with heat networks. Distributing electrons locally is much easier than moving heat locally and solves many more problems.

Joining Bluesky days after dumping my gas boiler(s). Is Heat Pump Bluesky going to be a ‘thing’ the way it was on Twitter?