Neil Schofield – Head of Government and External Affairs for Worcester, Bosch Group – questions whether the public want to switch their boiler for a renewable technology.

Do you get annoyed when people come up with simplistic solutions to difficult problems?

Like road congestion. Answer: build more roads. Which is fine until you point out that the number of cars increases with each extra mile and you never move forward. Literally!

Unfortunately, the issue of domestic heat has plenty of easy answers – a fact amply demonstrated by the CEO of the Energy Savings Trust recently.

Undaunted by the twin problems of domestic carbon emissions and fuel poverty, Philip Sellwood’s big idea is to scrap gas-burning boilers and install renewables, such as solar thermal.

I barely know where to start with this. What reaction was he expecting from the heating industry? Was he expecting us all to shout, “Eureka, he’s got it!”.

Who is going to pay for this mass installation of renewables?

Anybody in fuel poverty certainly won’t have the cash, heating systems have not been designed for low temperature heating and Government schemes such as Green Deal have failed miserably.

Where are we going to store all this hot water that renewable technologies require? Around 15 million homes have a Combi and no hot water storage cylinders – in fact, most airing cupboards have now become walk-in showers.

But, for me, this is the clincher: The public don’t want them, not in significant numbers anyway. The majority don’t want to store water – they want to turn a tap and get it instantly.

Now, that doesn’t mean that renewables won’t play some role as part of a wider energy efficiency solution, but make no mistake, the solution will include boilers. However, those boilers may not be burning natural gas – more likely they will be hydrogen (as I have already pointed out in previous columns).

The bottom line is we need to listen to the public. Let’s stop talking about perfect world scenarios and get real.