The UK government is cracking down on people using wood burning stoves with a fines for burning wood as they struggle to keep warm amid energy price hikes.
Britons now face £300 fines and possible prosecutions if they ignore the country’s climate diktats.
As the Conservative Party-led governments implement green agenda policies while refusing to tap the nation’s natural resources, residents facing soaring bills are now opting for wood-burning stoves to cut costs.
However, the government in Westminster has told local authorities to use the 2021 Environment Act to impose spot fines of £175 to £300 for those using wood-fire stoves that do not meet state standards on air pollution, according to The Times.
Those who continually breach the codes face criminal prosecutions additional fines for burning wood, these include £5,000 and a further £2,500 fine for every additional day they try to keep warm.
Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey claimed she wants the government to take “an educational approach” to using older stoves and the burning of wet wood, saying: “We want people to do the right thing.”
ClientEarth, the green charity campaign group, praised the move and called for the government to ban burning wood completely.
“Pollution from wood-burning is a growing source of fine particulate matter pollution in some areas, which is a serious threat to people’speople’s health,” spokeswoman Andrea Lea said.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan also praised the move, with a spokesman saying: “By taking a lead in the capital, the mayor has already reduced air pollution in London five times faster than in the rest of the country since 2016.”
Meanwhile, Professor Frank Kelly of Imperial College London voiced concerns over whether councils have the resources to dedicate to policing homes.
“If you report that you’ve walked past a property and you can see smoke coming out of a chimney when there shouldn’t be, it’s very, very unlikely that an enforcement officer is going to turn up at that door and do anything. It’s down to the local council to enforce them, and they haven’t got the manpower to do it,” he said.
Despite all the concerns about how wood-burning stoves damage the environment, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) found that wood-burning stoves cause less than half of the emissions of PM2.5 particulates than previously claimed, revising the figure down from 38 percent of all emissions down to just 17 percent.
British households have faced a 65.4 percent rise in electricity prices and a whopping 128.9 percent in gas prices over the last year.
Although the hike is often blamed on the war in Ukraine, the green agenda policies have seen billions poured into unreliable forms of energy like wind and solar while ignoring nuclear power.
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