France ends gas heaters subsidies

Sure, my colleague will email you. Our careers page is https://tiko.energy/careers/

Developer in France here. No, it's not, not by a long shot.

Heat-pump to make hot water is a thing, heat-pump to heat a house (low inertia, geothermal as such) are another. A good enough heat-pump water heater demand more space than a gas one (300-500 liter are common kind, while gas ones tend to be instantaneous, the size of a backpack) and cost essentially the same. A low inertia geothermal heat pump to heat a house demand:

- a big capex (~20k euros)

- a sufficiently insulated house

So potentially, for old house in moderately cold winter climate that means 50-60k euro investments that probably can be paid back in 15 years, if everything last at least 15 years without breakages... Far more economical air-air or air-water heat pumps can't be used in many place simply because of exterior temperature, especially at night, and insufficient insulation.

Of course: we know all houses MUST tend to consume less, BUT pushing the need for new houses in the middle of a crisis, where many comprehend that's partially natural, but also partially artificial (just to make some people richer) it's not exactly a viable way. Italy for instance launch a "110% incentives" that essentially means: we (government) pay 110% of any work needed to get 2 energy consumption class improvement in houses. The result after more than an year is a disaster: due to high demand it's almost impossible finding anything and prices have been skyrocket well passing bonus thresholds. France have launched a bit before "1 euro symbolic price for generic insulation", as a result many choose it, it was far simple than the Italian 110% but again the outcome was mostly very bad: to maximize profits most enterprises have done very bad/useless jobs just dropping insulation without ventilation, without caring of humidity etc.

IMVHO the SOLE option is pushing individual homes, offering incentives to sell apartments to the State (buy back to demolish in the future) in exchange of new A-class houses. That means a first batch of remote workers and retirees from the middle class, behind them small opportunities for service industry will appear so new people coming and behind them others as well. That's might be doable in 25+ years for a significant amount of people, in 50+ years for most with a new old distributed economy in the whole country instead of a concentrated ones in the hands and places. The rest seems to be a classic stereotypical USA-style business plan: try and fix on the go while making disasters on scale. It's a recipe for a disaster so big that have all the potential for a global unrest at WWIII level...

Just pushing "small potatoes" efficiency like "just change to heat pumps for hot water, induction plates etc" is meaningless: the outcome will be may small capex for not really reduced opex, a big amount of wastes, a big gains for few who build such appliance and no real benefit for the society. For instance I have a hot-water heat pump and a solar p.v. system, most of the time I prefer heat water with the classic 2.7kW electrical resistance inside the pump because it's load curb works far better with p.v. self-consumption since it's far faster than the heat pump and so let me schedule more loads (washing machine, dishwasher etc) during the peak hours. Long story short: if we push p.v. systems it's better for them having a kind of electrical appliance that's NOT better for reduce power bill without p.v. and that's a problem. Also their MTBF vary and that's another problem. These days and not from today too many prefer focusing on an aspect and ignore the big picture, that does not work. We always need the big picture.

There are few issues there: Russians of course do not act for humanitarian reasons but for interests however they are right saying the NATO create a nazi gov in Ukraine and they are right saying they are not starting a war because the civil war between those nazi militias (like Pravy Sektor, C14, Azov etc) and Russian-speaking Ukrainian (30+% of the total population) was started in 2014 with the infamous Euromaidan massacre and keep going in a slow genocide since them. That's one of the real issues. Others are the fact that so far Russian do not start any war, while NATO have done that, and have done that with lie like the nonexistent Saddam mass-destruction weapons or the lie that the taliban (created by NATO BTW, to counter Soviet Union) host bin laden.

Long story short: putin is a dictator BUT his propaganda have plenty fo truth to use against NATO just because the other side (USA and UK in primis, BUT others as well) are equally dictatorships only with much more hypocrisy and less symbols. The famous putin's definition of the west as the empire of lie is unfortunately actually true.

The "solution" then depend on who: for us, Citizens, the solution is eradicating the neoliberal ideology will all their apical figure put to serve lifetime jail in condition sore enough to discourage anyone trying to follow their examples. For USA and UK gov. the war MUST go on though because they need to silence protests against them by their own people hit by economic crisis and Democracy destruction operated by them. China LIKE the war because for them means having plenty of Russian's natural resources, at a discounted price, and also probably access to high tech military gears, probably enough to counter USA in few years given their industrial power. Putin need a bit the war to silence protests in Russia itself, destroy the oligarch he dislike (and he actually thanks the NATO for sanctions help). So that's the issue: the solution needed by the people is the opposite of the needs of the "élites".

You (and many others) forget a thing: gas is not only used to heat... It's used in various industrial sectors. Did you know why there is a fertilizer crisis in agriculture? Because modern fertilizers are made from gas, via ammonia. Oh, of course we have classic manure, but unfortunately if not enough because the Green New Deal want to push a meat-less diet not because of pollution but because doing so means that food production is a big industrial business, not something little player can run and compete. So we do not have enough natural and NON-polluting fertilizers and we do not have enough synthetic fertilizers either.

Not only: many industrial process need heat, they might probably switch to electricity but not "today" and even doing so the price of the output will be veeeery higher than today not counting the fact that actually we do not know how to satisfy such eventual hyper-big electricity demand. If tomorrow all cars became e.v. in a snap we simply can't recharge them. Not only: we can't make metals for the green revolutions without fossils. etc etc etc.

Long story short: I'm a LEFT-wing environmentalist and I see the Green New Deal as green as "dollar green" or "stereotypical toxic waste green", certainly not environment natural grass green. Oh, and do consider a thing: so far skyrocketed prices from gas, oil etc is NOT due to the Russians who keep selling as usual (and sanctions avoid touching those aspects) BUT due to future market speculations witch is a western and neoliberal thing, as "green" as the nazi, the same nazi they have armed and trained in Ukraine actually, not much differently on the original nazi in Germany, created and financed by the big & powerful of their time, locals AND from other countries included USA and UK wealthy and gov. (remember IBM and Standard Oil just to name two well known?)...

Smelling rodent for myself I've choose to live a big city for a mounting area (a bit remote, BUT well served for various aspects, from internet connections to food and services) building a modern insulated house, with a small p.v. systems etc at that time was not cheap but now start to pay back not much by nature but by artificially skyrocket price of anything. And that's not good ALSO for me because yes, these days I'm well served by such investments but that's for artificial reasons. I'm still be "less wealthy" than what I could due to the new deal. Only very few keep profiting toward 2030 agenda where "no one [but neoliberals élite] will own nothing"...