Oxford City Council are going to prohibit gas hobs and boilers in new homes from 2025 in a bid to become more environmentally friendly.
The city is planning to hit zero by 2024 and says this move will help tackle the ‘existential threat of climate change’.
The proposals state that appliances that use fossil fuels for heating and cooking are to be prohibited from being installed in new homes, with very limited exceptions.
Oxford’s Labour Council also wants to bring forward their 2036 ban on gas and oil in new builds.
However, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) has criticised Oxford councillors for diverging from the national timetable to meet net zero by 2050.
Steve Turner, executive director at the HBF, told a newspaper outlet that they need all parties, including central and local government to work together and avoid diverging from the developing plan, which would lead to unnecessary delays and additional costs.
Steve Turner added that the industry was committed to the government’s plan and was working with stakeholders to deliver it.
In September, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pushed back green targets, such as the ban on new petrol and diesel car sales by five years to 2035.
About a fifth of all households will be covered by an ‘exemption’ from ever having to remove their gas boilers and replace them with a heat pump.
Rishi Sunak also said he was scrapping ‘heavy-handed’ measures including an increase in recycling that could see each home have seven bins, and taxes on meat and flying, and new rules on car-sharing journeys, though critics had already questioned whether they would ever be introduced.
The Prime Minister insisted his delay on net zero policies was not a ‘short-term decision’ aimed at winning the next general election.
Whilst there’s no set-out ban on gas hobs in the United Kingdom, an increasing amount of new homes will not be connected to the UK’s gas grid.
A report also found that gas cookers can fill a kitchen with air pollution that breaks recommended safe levels.
Researchers rigged monitoring equipment in more than 280 homes, 40 in the United Kingdom, as well as in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia.
More than half of homes using gas hobs and gas ovens in the experiment breached the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended maximum level of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) once a week.
Perhaps all those smart people in Oxford ought to do some research because banning gas hobs will have very little impact, and this looks like garbage science. Burning gas begets CO2 and water. Hobs are on for a brief period of time, and there’s very little probability of any health risks from gas hobs.
Perhaps we should tell them that council offices often leave their lights on when nobody is working and sometimes the heating gets left on as well. It appears that it’s one rule for them and another for us.
Not only that, we are permitting governments to tell us what we can have in our own private homes. Next, they’ll be telling us that we can’t breathe the air.
Unfortunately, science has become a religion when it comes to climate research, and anyone who doesn’t align with climate change is shunned.
It’s about time common sense was brought to politics. Climate change is happening, but it’s not man-made, it’s the natural cycle of the earth because nothing stays the same. It just can’t, and in the scheme of things it’s going to make absolutely no difference!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 