No, we don't have a wood burner

 

I'm so glad we didn't decide to fit a wood burner when we bought our current house. Instead we took the chimney out and eventually had a new, high efficiency boiler fitted. 12 years on, if we were renovating it now, we would probably be looking at a heat pump, but that's a discussion for another day.

I ought to say that there was a time I would have gone down the wood burner road. Seeking to move away from fossil fuels, wood burning seemed more sustainable and less impactful on the environment. But then comes the bad news. Even wood burners that meet the most recent criteria for emissions are actually very bad for the environment. 

One study shows that wood burning stoves that meet the regulations still emit 750 times more small particulate matter (PM2.5) than a heavy good vehicle, and that domestic wood burners are the single biggest source of PM2.5 air pollution in the UK, producing three times more pollution than road traffic. And the problem isn't just what goes up the chimney. These microscopic particles (PM2.5 refers to particles that are 2.5 microns in size) pass directly into the blood stream once they enter the lungs and every time you open the door of your stove, they are released into the room. 

Along with the particulates two dangerous chemicals are also released. Benzene and formaldehyde are both known carcinogens and are by products of burning wood. 

So they might look nice and cosy, they might be nice and warm and they be reducing the amount you have to spend on gas or oil, but they are not the long term solution to home heating and reducing our use of fossil fuels. 

Shock in the post

Got the gas bill today. Hopefully, with the improvements we made recently to the control system, the amount of gas we use to heat the house and the produce hot water will fall but that doesn't soften the immediate impact of the latest price rises.

British Gas has just put our monthly Direct Debit up by 67%. 67%! Unbelievable. What's worse is that a recent report said that gas prices were the highest in our region for the whole of the UK.

I know world prices have gone up and I've heard all the well rehearsed arguments on the radio, but I can't help but wonder how we've got ourselves in this position.

Has the constant pressure of years of deregulation and competition meant that energy prices have been forced artificially lower? Have we simply not been paying the right price for our energy? When you watch all the advertising for energy, it appears everyone can save you money. If that were true, then by now someone would be paying me to take gas and electricity off their hands. And then there's the "Buy both from us and it will be cheaper than using two companies approach." That doesn't sound much like competition to me.

In the end I think we've got ourselves in a real mess over energy and I remember the questions we asked when privatisation was first mooted: "In the end, who will really benefit from taking utilities out of public ownership?" Because we can't run the clock back and watch price changes over the same period with a nationalised energy market, we will never know the answer, but the question remains.

And finally, I don't keep up with all the changing technology and the advancements in R&D, but when I worked for British Gas 30 years ago we knew then that the resources were finite. We knew then that we needed to work on what comes after natural gas. There were projects looking at SNG (Substitute Natural Gas), where has that research gone in 30 years? Perhaps R&D was deemed non-profit making, too costly for the company in a shareholder economy and as a result the ideas shelved. I do know that the laboratories where I worked closed shortly after privatisation and, coincidentally my departure too. Although it must be said that I take no responsibility for the said closure!