Church of England orders parish to rip out brand new gas boilers – Watts Up With That?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve woken up on a different planet!

From the Telegraph:

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.

Full story here.

Let’s go to the heart of this.

That £62000 which will now be wasted could have been used for charity. In what world is it moral for the Diocese of Winchester to divert it instead to green wokery, which will be of absolutely no benefit at all to real people?