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Comment by Nux | Hacker News Reader

Wood burning stoves should be banned outright in the capital.

It's mostly hipsters and posh people using them anyway, they will survive.

The article mentions that it's "partly down to the savings they can make to energy bills". It's time to tax them accordingly then, people shouldn't be allowed to pollute the air just to save money.

That would be simple to do. When I bought my wood burning stove (I'm a posh hipster) I bought one that was specifically certified by the Department for the Environment to be used in smokeless zones (of which London is one).

Either the certification/regulation isn't stringent enough (although I can't see smoke emerging from my chimney from the adjacent lost room when it is running) or people are fitting non-DfE approved stoves, in which case enforcement needs to be improved.

Of course, I originally got the wood burner to minimise my CO2 footprint - the same reason I bought a diesel rather than petrol car.

I applaud your effort, but generally speaking it looks like we were lied to about the diesel efficiency claims.

And CO2 is not the only pollution consideration. There are all sorts of carcinogens, heavy metals, and particulates that can be released when burning anything.

I'm not sure that's correct, certainly the updated current CO2 emission figures post-scandal are still significantly lower for diesel than petrol per mile.

Do you see much smoke during the first few minutes after lighting? After it gets up to proper operating temperature then the combustion should be more efficient, with a lot less smoke visible, but as it warms up it could be belching out a lot of smoke. I see large quantities of initial smoke from mine (and a few other houses in my old, rural street). The type of wood used will also affect it, of course.

BTW, given that you bought an exempted stove you could probably burn this sort of thing as well:

https://solidfuelcentre.co.uk/homefire-olive-briquettes

Why burn wood for heating if you care about CO2 footprint? Even electric heating is more efficient the reason why no fireplace is allowed to be classified as heating in a flat anymore (they are all decorative) is that 90% of the energy is wasted down the chimney.

> Why burn wood for heating if you care about CO2 footprint?

Presumably because (assuming sustainable forestry) burning wood is carbon neutral.

> Even electric heating is more efficient

It's not more net carbon emissions efficient. Energy efficiency and carbon impact are not always aligned.

Sustainable forestry is a myth it can take centuries to sequester the carbon back into wood that you would burn in one winter.

Electric is by far more net carbon emission efficient than wood burning stoves (wood boilers are a bit better but not by much) especially considering the percentage of nuclear and renewable energy in the UK.

A sitka spruce grows to full size in about 35 years. With the amount we burn, a single large tree lasts around 5 winters.

Because I have a friend who owns a wood and they are felling old pines while replanting deciduous. Hence the wood burner is more-or-less carbon neutral. It's also a really efficient model.

I used to think this too but heating costs are expensive in the UK.

My own country has a very large supply of natural gas in the ground so its pretty cheap to get through the winter. The UK has to import.

Don't they also need to import wood? I can't imagine they have such oversupply. On the other hand they have oil in Scotland.

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