If you have a gas fire that hasn’t been working very well, the summer is the best and most obvious time to get it repaired.
This is not because you are likely to need to use it anytime soon. Indeed, quite the opposite. Now is the best time to get any gas appliance fixed because while the work is taking place, you won’t need it to stay warm.
Moreover, when appliances fail in winter engineers can be very busy with emergency call-outs because it is cold. In summer, it is easier to find someone available and you can arrange a more mutually convenient time.
There may be some folk, however, who might suggest to you that if your gas fire isn’t working well, now might be the time to replace it instead of fixing it. In particular, some may argue that given the UK’s energy transition and the need to save the planet, now could be a good time to bite the bullet, replace gas pipes with wires and go electric.
Manifestos That Won’t Rip Your Gas Fire Out
Such a time may come, but it is not yet, nor likely to be all that soon. The simple reality is that, for all the aspirations of some to see an energy system run entirely off renewables without any fossil fuels in sight, few believe that is going to be the case.
This has become evident from the proposals you can read in party manifestos as the general election approaches. Of course, at one end of the scale the Green Party wants a completely zero carbon Britain as early as 2040, while at the other, the Reform manifesto (or ‘contract’) is vehemently opposed to even trying to reach Net Zero.
In between, the parties whose seat tallies will not be in single figures after the election, at least one of whom will be in government, all look towards a future with less oil and gas, but not for a while yet.
The Liberal Democrats, often seen as the greenest of the three main UK-wide parties, want to see a cut in emissions of 68 per cent by 2030 and a decoupling of electricity prices from gas (protecting against a price shock such as occurred after the Russian invasion of Ukraine). But that is not the same as scrapping every gas fire.
Conservative policy is to continue expanding renewable energy as well as investing in new nuclear power projects, but it is certainly not planning to do away with gas yet; on the contrary, it has pledged to build new gas power stations to “maintain a safe and reliable energy source for days when the weather doesn’t power up renewables.”
Prospects Under Labour
The Labour Party currently looks firmly on course for a decisive election victory, so its plans are likely to be the most significant, as they will soon form the basis of the policy direction the country goes in.
A central part of this is the formation of an organisation called Great British Energy, with a mission to invest in the development of green energy technology, more locally-produced green energy, reform of the energy market, improvements to the National Grid and a programme of home insulation to reduce the amount of energy homes need to use.
Amid all that, however, there are no plans stated to get rid of gas fires or gas boilers by any specific date, despite that formerly being part of the Net Zero plan, something Rishi Sunak rowed back on when he became prime minister amid concerns about the cost to consumers.
Indeed, while the various parties have different views about future investment in oil and gas projects in the North Sea – Labour won’t issue any new licences – it is worth remembering that a large proportion of Britain’s gas is now imported, coming in mainly through the Langeled pipeline from Norway or in the form of liquid natural gas, mostly from Qatar.
A Wide Consensus On Gas
The conclusion to draw from all this is that while all the parties except Reform are committed to an energy transition towards Net Zero, with only the details and timescales differing, none of them have plans to force householders to rip out their gas fires and replace them with electric ones anytime soon.
Of course, if you decided you did want to replace your gas fire with an electric one you could go ahead and do so, although this would be a far more expensive option than getting your gas fire repaired.So whether you stay up to watch the results come in on election night or find out what happened on the news when you get up on the morning of June 5th, you can be sure that you can still vote for a warm gas fire in your home.