Maybe I am being overly cynical but this sounds like a handout to fossil fuel companies to keep people using gas longer. The standing charge was an extra reason to push me towards cutting off my gas supply entirely several years ago and going fully electric.
Crazy thing is despite all the propaganda against it, my heat pump works great in my house that is almost 100 years old. A kW of heat is a kW of heat regardless of where it comes from.
Always worth pointing out that the kW of heat energy is only using between 0.25 and 0.5 kW of electricity to bring that heat into the house.
Heat pumps don’t generate heat; they literally move heat from the outside air, into the house…
Which is so much more efficient, it’s mind boggling there’s such resistance to it
I would be curious how little energy it takes in summer as its still doing hot water. Pretty sure with the summer we had it could have acted like a heat exchanger alone and the water would have been warm enough. Its internal thermometer read well over 40c most days when it was in the sun.
I’m not buying it.
Adding it to the unit rate will not help poorer households.
Poorer households tend to have prepayment meters.
The unit rate of prepayment meters is already higher than the unit rate of paying monthly/quarterly etc
How is increasing that unit rate going to help
It will help if you use very little and cost more if you use lots.
Look at the economist over here
Well someone needed it explaining.
Do you know of any numbers on the proportion of those with prepared meters? Anecdotally, I’ve only ever seen it in one flat I started in.