Church Told to Rip Out New Boilers to Meet 2030 Net Zero Target

The Church of England and the National Trust are two of the UK’s most ardent woke epicentres, so it is no surprise that both are in the news almost daily with fresh revelations about their antics.

One of the latest, according to the Telegraph, concerns Christ Church, Chineham, in Basingstoke, which spent £18,200 last year replacing two [sic] clapped-out gas boilers with new models. Sadly, the church had not taken into account the Church of England’s aspiration to reach Net Zero by 2030:

New rules require churches to obtain a faculty – ecclesiastical planning permission – and prove there is no viable green alternative before new oil or gas boilers can be installed.

The church chose to install gas boilers after commissioning a report from a mechanical engineer, who was a member of its congregation, which found heat pumps would require “extensive and intrusive works” and be far more expensive than gas.

The church also commissioned an Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) report, which estimated the cost of installing heat pumps at £62,000, but still recommended their installation before the Net Zero target date of 2030.

The church instead chose to install the gas boilers at a third of the price and then applied retrospectively for a faculty.

But when the case came before the Diocese of Winchester’s consistory court, it ruled that the gas boilers were “undesirable as it locks the church into significant fossil fuel use well beyond 2030”.

“If the 2030 objective means anything, it is in churches such as this that sustainable heating solutions need to be installed now, not in 2045 or thereafter,” Cain Ormondroyd, the diocese’s chancellor, said.

The decision was made reluctantly to allow the church a faculty:

In the judgment handed down in October, Mr Ormondroyd ordered the church to remove the boilers within three years and replace them with “a more sustainable form of heating before the 2030 target date”.

It is not clear how the enforced obsolescence of nearly new gas boilers, and the installation of a heat pump consuming electricity generated by gas- or wood chip-burning power stations, will assist the Church of England in its march to the Promised Land.

Mike Foster, chief executive of the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA), said gas boilers were “being sacrificed on the altar of worshipping heat pumps” by the Church of England.

“It is entirely a matter for the Church of England to explain to its parishioners that perfectly good boilers have to be ripped out to maintain the green virtue-signalling of the church,” he told the Telegraph.

According to the Church Times, which covered the story in November last year, three boilers were involved in the works. However, it adds that during the three-year grace period:

a condition was imposed, as suggested by the guidance, requiring that any carbon emissions from the operation of the gas boilers be offset.

The knotty issue of replacing old church boilers has clearly been around for some time, but in certain other instances begrudging pragmatism appears to have prevailed – for example at St Mary the Virgin, Dedham, according to the Ecclesiastical Law Association:

The church’s oil-fired heating boiler, installed 35 years previously, had come to the end of its working life and spare parts were no longer available. The churchwardens sought permission to replace the boiler with a new gas boiler. The Diocesan Advisory Committee expressed its disappointment that the church had not opted for a more environmentally friendly heating system. The Chancellor granted a faculty, being satisfied that the petitioners had considered the Church of England’s ‘Net Zero Roadmap’ and the Church Building Council’s guidance, and that the petitioners had also considered several alternative options, which had been discounted for various reasons, including costs, aesthetic considerations, and the potential impact of the different proposed solutions on the fabric and special character of the Grade I listed building. The Chancellor made it a condition of the faculty (inter alia) that so far as was practicable, gas supplied under a green tariff was to be used for the new system.

Given how cash-strapped most churches are, the point must be approaching when these infrastructure projects – and thus the buildings themselves – are simply abandoned. The Church of England appears determined to hasten that moment. Still, at least it can feel good about itself, and perhaps that is all that matters.

The Telegraph’s piece is worth reading in full.