Since the beginning of the Iran war, Roger Lyne has seen his neighbours’ fuel bills more than double. Dependent on oil heating, which is not covered by the energy price cap, they have felt the war’s impact on bills before the rest of the country. “They’re constantly worried about it,” he said.
For Lyne, however, the past two months have not been so nerve-racking. When he realised Iran was going to “hold us to ransom” by stopping tankers transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, he decided to install a heat pump in the garden of his bungalow in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
Had he not replaced his oil boiler, he estimates that he would have spent £3,200 this year on fuel. Instead, his installer, the energy firm Octopus, estimates that he will spend £500 on powering the electric device to gather heat from outside air. “It was a no-brainer,” said the 79-year-old former computer salesman. “I’m not going to live with fuel bills overshadowing my life.”
His wife, Yana, 63, a mental health care assistant, said: “I was a bit worried at first that it wouldn’t heat the water enough but I can’t fault it at all.”
With an electric Kia EV3 on their drive, solar panels on their roof and a battery soon to be installed to store solar energy overnight, the Lynes are among the growing number of Britons turning to clean technologies to shield themselves from rising fossil fuel prices.
Between February and April, as the price of oil rose from $70 to more than $100 a barrel, Octopus’s heat pump orders rose by 72 per cent. Its solar panel and battery sales boomed 104 per cent, and EV chargers rose 31 per cent. Solar and battery sales at Octopus’s competitor E.ON Next have risen even faster, by 182 per cent.
In March more than 27,000 homes and businesses fitted solar panels, the highest number since 2012, when the technology was still heavily subsidised. A typical set of solar panels costs about £6,100, cuts household bills by £650 a year, and lasts for 25 year or more, according to the Energy Savings Trust.
This boom in installations comes before an expected rise in the energy price cap in July. A typical household gas and electricity bill is forecast to increase from £1,641 a year to £1,929.
“The war has certainly accelerated clean tech adoption,” said Jan Rosenow, a professor of energy and climate policy at the University of Oxford. The question, he added, was whether this boom would continue, or prove to be a blip.
When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices soaring in 2022, households similarly rushed to install solar panels and heat pumps. However, installations levelled off as the conflict continued.
This time, Rosenow predicts, the solar boom will prove “unstoppable”, because the price of panels has fallen 40 per cent since 2020, and their cost savings are becoming common knowledge. From the summer, retailers including Lidl and Amazon will begin offering plug-in solar panels that can be hung from balconies for as little as £200.
In decades past, once household appliances such as washing machines were adopted by an affluent minority, they quickly fell in price and spread to most homes. Between 1930 and 1940, for instance, the proportion of American homes with refrigerators rose from 13 to 63 per cent. Rosenow suggested that Britain may soon see a similar “exponential” spread of solar panels, which cover the roofs of only 5.7 per cent of homes.
Heat pumps, Rosenow added, “will take a little longer to reach that critical mass of early adopters” because they are a bit more difficult to install.
The Lynes benefitted from the government’s £7,500 heat pump grant — since increased to £9,000 for homes heated by oil — and paid just £2,000. “The long-term goal is not to need subsidies any more,” said Rosenow.
The rise in the price of petrol since the start of the war also appears to have boosted the sale of electric vehicles. EV sales were 59 per cent higher last month than the previous April and made up more than one in four vehicles sold. Partly thanks to carmakers discounting their vehicles to hit government targets, electric models are cheaper than petrol. Their running costs are also far lower: whereas Lyne’s friends have been paying as much as £100 at the pump, he charges his Kia overnight for about £5.
Having been convinced to install a heat pump by their neighbour, the Lynes are heartened to see that two more households on their street are planning to make the switch. “I’m so glad we’ve done it,” Mrs Lyne said. “It’s nice to see it’s slowly spreading through the neighbourhood.”
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