© ess/imageBROKER.com/Ulrich Niehoff
The UK government's ban on the sale of coal and wet logs to burn in domestic fireplaces, to be implemented between 2021 and 2023, is ill-thought-out because
it will increase fuel poverty and greatly disadvantage the rural poor.
'Keep the Home Fires Burning' was the name of a hugely popular Ivor Novello song during the First World War. The British government has just released a 2020 cover version. It's called 'Keep the Home Fires burning so long as it's not coal or wet wood burning in them.' Nowhere near as catchy, is it?
The government is acting, it says, on grounds of public health and in accordance with its 'Clean Air' strategy.
It claims that wet wood (that's wood with a moisture content of at least 20%), and coal, is responsible for 38 percent of PM2.5 pollution in the UK. PM2.5s are particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter which, by penetrating deeply into the lung, can cause various diseases. A
British Medical Journal research paper found that "positive associations between short term exposure to PM2.5 and risk of hospital admission were found for several prevalent but rarely studied diseases, such as septicemia, fluid and electrolyte disorders."
So, it has to be good, this banning of wet wood and coal fires, doesn't it? Well, not if it plunges even more people into fuel poverty - and prevents people from heating their homes adequately.
How many deaths will that cause?
The economic backdrop to the government's announcement, which cannot be ignored, is that
according to the latest statistics (from 2017),
there are 2.53 million "fuel-poor" households in England, ie 10.9 percent of the total number of households. National Energy Action puts the figure in Britain as a whole at 3.5mn.
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