I received the second notice from Wales and West Utilities this year about replacing the gas pipes in my area. This is part of a nationwide process which has been ongoing for years. I understand the pipes in older parts of town could go back decades, even over a century in extreme cases, and they don’t last for ever, but something doesn’t quite add up here.
The leaflet advises me it is necessary to renew the whole network to ensure gas can continue to flow safely “for generations to come.” That’s the bit I find puzzling. Aren’t we supposed to be weening domestic customers off gas? Isn’t that part of our Net-zero commitment? Why, then, is the government either spending or requiring the pipework companies to spend thousands of millions of pounds to fund the wholesale renewal of a network which is intended to be retired in the next decade or so as we all switch to heat pumps? Surely, it would make more sense to patch up pipes as they fail or show imminent signs of danger until they are finally disconnected for good.
If gas boiler installation is to stop in around ten years’ time and the last few to be installed will have about a ten year life, we don’t need the network to last more than twenty years before people are notified of the end and the need for the last few houses to install their heat pumps which, by then, should be a lot cheaper and much improved from those we have today. As the technology matures and production scale rises they should become both cheaper and better. Renewing the gas supply system “for generations to come” sounds as if the government lacks faith in its own policy so much it can’t quite believe what it says. Either that, or it simply wishes to waste huge amounts of public money on another project which can never bring a return on the investment for, whether as energy customers or taxpayers, only the public can pay for this obviously pointless work.
