​Heat pumps are the future if mankind is to save the earth

day and not just the house but all of us had to be clean, tidy and in our Sunday best for Sunday school.

I don’t ever remember that house being cold in winter. It was only when I left home and went to live and work in Ballymena that I dreaded the approaching winter.

The flat I shared with three others even with a coal fire burning in the living room, was like an ice-box. The bathroom was at the end of a long corridor and a hot bath was never an option. That coal fire just wasn’t up to the job of providing anything but lukewarm water.

I married and our first home had a solid fuel room heater. We never looked back. Central heating from solid fuel - I was in bliss-land. It was a small house, easy to heat.

All these memories returned to me recently with the news that heat pumps are going to be the next thing for heating our homes. And no, I really haven’t much idea of what they are or how they

operate. Something to do with moving on to a zero-carbon future driven by those who keep telling us the earth won’t survive if we don’t stop polluting it.

All those fires which have spoiled holiday places in Europe this year are due to earth warming up.

This generation has to start the ball rolling to save the earth.

Presently we import oil and gas from abroad. These two items have kept our homes warm and dry for more than half a century but they too are not good for the earth.

But maybe not for long. I’ve a new vocabulary – fossil fuel, renewables, carbon capture and heat pumps and whilst our Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems to be backing the whole caboodle I’m determined to keep what I have – my ageing oil fired boiler - until Rishi gives me the money to replace it.

Now, heat pumps I know nothing about. I don’t even know how my oil fired burner works and I don’t need to know because ours has never failed us in all the years we’ve used it. But heat pumps don’t sound half as efficient and so far, anything I’ve read sounds a bit vague. They will also cost an arm and a leg as much as double the cost of a new oil boiler.

Yes, I’ve listened to Sir David Attenborough going on about how we are damaging the earth by our current methods. But shutting down the tried and trusted means for keeping us warm and productive is a step too far right now. We definitely are not ready yet for the heat pump era. The expense is reckoned to be prohibitive and I’m certainly not sure if we have the right politicians to drive us towards this heat pump era. Most of them probably don’t know any more than the rest of us.

Construction of Kilroot power station was started in 1974 and commissioned in 1981. I was a young journalist in that area at the time and little did I think then that one day it would be put out of action. A heat pump method doesn’t inspire me much. We already know the cost will most likely be prohibitive. My generation’s children will be footing the bill for heat pumps. I don’t envy them at all.