The Church of England has ordered a parish to rip out new gas boilers because they are not “sustainable”.
Christ Church Chineham, in Basingstoke, Hants, spent £18,200 last year replacing two failing gas boilers, with the new ones expected to last for at least two decades.
But the parish will now be forced to remove the system and pay for an eco-friendly replacement after a church court ruled it had not “adequately explored more sustainable options” before installing them.
Christ Church Chineham is the latest church to fall victim to the Church of England’s target of achieving net zero carbon emissions 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 much more expensive than gas.
Parish applied for retrospective permission
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 its installation before the net zero target date of 2030.
The church chose instead 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.
Mr Ormondroyd said he was within his rights to “require the immediate removal of the unlawfully installed gas boilers” but told the church that he would not take this “drastic course of action”.
“Winter is again approaching and it would evidently impose a further heavy burden on the petitioners if they had to do more work on an expedited basis to explore different options,” he said. “That is in no one’s interests.”
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”.
Boilers ‘sacrificed to virtue signalling’
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.
“The facts of this case clearly show, what we all know, that a heat pump solution costs more to install than a boiler, and the UK Government publicly acknowledges that a heat pump costs more to run than a gas boiler, but evidently the Church of England is so flush with cash it can make these decisions.
“That heat pump is probably going to use electricity generated by gas-burning power stations or from chopping down trees for wood chips at Drax, but the appearance of going green matters more than the actuality.
“Those gas boilers, being ripped out, could be using green gases such as biomethane, benefiting rural economies, to achieve net zero status but they are being sacrificed on the altar of worshipping heat pumps.”
Christ Church Chineham did not respond to a request for comment.
The Diocese of Winchester was approached for comment.