Wood-burning stoves face ban in pollution crackdown in London

By Paul Homewood

Tangled webs!!

Wood burning is set to be banned in some urban areas to reduce air pollution under proposed restrictions that would be the strongest in Europe.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is seeking powers to prohibit all burning of wood in parts of the capital with poor air quality. He also wants tighter curbs on wood-burning stoves, with only low- emission versions allowed to stay on sale.

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Since 2006, successive governments have been handing out millions of pounds in subsidies for houses and businesses who install wood-burning stoves and boilers.

Subsidies are still being out for new installations through the Renewable Heat Incentive. It’s a bit of a complicated system, with payments based on various factors, such as size and age of house. Payments are guaranteed for 7 years.

I have run the government’s RHI calculator for our house, and it comes up with a subsidy of £6720 over the full period:

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The RHI scheme was introduced by the Coalition Government in 2011, but this replaced Labour’s Low Carbon Building Programme, introduced in 2006 to offer grants towards the cost of installing domestic microgeneration technologies.

As with the diesel fiasco, government policy was obsessively skewed to reducing emissions of CO2, with little regard to real environmental issues.