Oil boiler ban questioned by backlash from conservatives

The government's current position is that new oil boilers will be banned at some point in 2026. Credit: Jason Bai

The ban on new oil-fired boilers from 2026 has been called into question after government insiders insisted it was just a «proposal». that there is no certainty that Rishi Sunak will go for it.

This comes after a growing backlash against the ban among Conservative MPs this week, with George Eustis, the former Environment Minister, taking the lead public criticism. /p>

Analysis by The Telegraph found that approximately one in seven households in cabinet constituencies are offline, meaning they will be affected by the ban.

Oil fired boilers in cabinet ministerial districts

>The government's current position is that the installation of new oil-fired boilers will be banned at some point in 2026.

However, government insiders close to politics , The Telegraph stressed that Mr. Sunak's government has yet to make a final decision on the ban.

“This is just a suggestion,” said one Whitehall source familiar with the discussions. «It was not accepted as public policy.» Another echoed the sentiment.

Keep your commitments

This comes after Mr Johnson publicly called on his party on Friday to stick to its commitments to make the UK a net zero carbon source by 2050 year.

The policy adopted to ensure the transition to zero carbon has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after Labor failed to win a by-election in Uxbridge last month, blamed on the planned expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez).

Even if the 2026 hard ban was cancelled, government ministers can still choose to phase in the same policy over a longer period of time.

It is not yet clear when the government will respond to the 2026 ban consultations that were released in 2021. They closed 20 months ago. but so far there has been no government response to submissions.

Long delays in responses to zero-emission policy consultations have become a feature of recent government policy.

Regulations requiring more than one fifth of new cars sold in the UK to be zero emission models. next January, but the government has yet to announce exactly how the requirements will work, or even if they will definitely be implemented.

At the same time, analysis of publicly available data showed that there are 210,000 households in cabinet constituencies off the grid, which is 15 percent of all homes in these areas.

Mr. Sunak's district of Richmond has 8,400 self-contained homes, or 16.7% of the total. In the office of Mel Stride, Secretary of Labor and Pensions, the proportion of homes not connected to the grid is 29 percent.

“2026 is still too early”

Meanwhile, it emerged that the Country Land and Business Association said that “ 2026 is too soon» in its official response to a new consultation to ban oil boilers.

The body accused the government of a «highly unconventional approach to high-hanging fruit» that would require rural homes to take «everything immediate risks of an immature low-carbon heating market.”

It looks like this. Mr. Johnson wrote in the Daily Mail that “you can create phenomenal wealth and millions of high-paying jobs with zero-friendly clean technologies, and the answer is not to give up on zero net income ambitions, which is not seems to me ecologically sound (or electorally smart, for that matter) but to work harder to ensure that the UK economy benefits from the inevitable and growing green revolution.»

He said: «Fossil use fuel should be phased out when an economical, affordable and suitable low-carbon heating option for flue gas, rural homes becomes available.»

An Energy Security Department spokesman said: «We have consulted on new rules for phasing out boilers in homes and non-residential buildings from gas network from 2026. We will confirm our plans when we publish our consultation response in due course.”