Boilers for Global Boiling

Nominee one in our Fossil Heating Greenwashing Awards are the “Boilers for Global Boiling”.

As the pressure to phase out fossil fuels increases the fossil fuel industry is using every marketing trick in the book to make sure that fossil fuel boilers continue to be installed. Fossil fuel boilers have a lifespan of one to two decades so once a new fossil fuel boiler is installed in a house there’s a real risk that the household will become locked into using expensive, dirty fossil fuels for many years to come.

Here we highlight some examples of fossil fuel boilers that make “Boilers for Global Boiling” worthy of a nomination for our Fossil Heating Award.

Natural Gas Boilers (= fossil gas boilers)

Natural gas is simply a nice sounding word for fossil gas, a climate polluting fossil fuel. Gas boilers are often marketed as being “highly efficient” but there’s no getting away from the fact that they run on fossil fuels that are expensive, dirty and incompatible with efforts to prevent dangerous climate breakdown. Gas boilers have a life span of 10 to 15 (sometimes even 20) years which makes their continued installation a huge threat to climate action - essentially “locking people in” to using polluting gas for many years to come. 

The gas industry’s utter lack of any moral conscience has yet again been highlighted as it has set about exploiting those suffering from energy poverty by claiming that gas could be an answer to unaffordable heating bills. In reality, we know that dependence on fossil gas exposes people to expensive and volatile energy bills and is a root cause of energy poverty, not a solution. And we know that less expensive, healthier alternatives exist; from insulation, to heat pumps to solar panels. Alternatives that would reduce both our energy bills and polluting emissions. 

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has spent millions lobbying to keep us hooked on oil and gas whilst blocking a just energy transition. Not only that, but a report published last year revealed that fossil fuel industry lobbyists have successfully pressed governments and the EU to undermine measures meant to reduce household bills, protect people from energy poverty and tax windfall profits during the energy crisis. The doublespeak is mind boggling. 

Fossil fuel companies’ lobbying and marketing spin has yielded rich rewards for this dangerous industry with local, national and EU-level politicians, state bodies and policy makers taking actions that keep us locked into fossil fuels. 

From January to early September 2023,  Ireland's national energy authority's Warmer Homes Scheme provided heating system replacements to 861 homes. Of these, 822 were oil or gas boilers - therefore locking vulnerable people into fossil fuel dependency and potential future energy poverty or deprivation. Only 39 homes had heat pumps installed.

Hydrogen ready boilers (smallprint: a type of fossil gas boiler)

Hydrogen is being promoted by the fossil fuel industry as a ‘clean’ alternative to fossil fuels used for home heating (and other purposes). Hydrogen lobbyists say it would avoid households having to replace gas boilers with heat pumps and some gas boilers are even being marketed as “hydrogen ready” in an attempt to make them look green. However independent research has found that heating with hydrogen is a lot less efficient and more expensive than alternatives such as heat pumps, district heating and solar thermal. In the UK the competition watchdog has warned that the marketing of new gas boilers as “hydrogen ready” could be greenwashing and breaking consumer protection law. 

Hydrogen is expensive to produce, inefficient and far from a low carbon solution for home heating. Instead it is a dangerous distraction and a false solution, sold by the fossil fuel industry as a “magical fix” to let it continue to control our heating systems and lock in business as usual. 

Biofuel compatible/HVO-ready boilers (palm oil alert!)

Biofuel compatible boilers are another type of boiler that are made to look sustainable when in reality they also risk locking us into continued fossil fuel use and causing other environmental and human rights issues along the way. Biofuel ready boilers can run on fossil oil (such as kerosene) but can also run on a blend of fossil fuel and biofuel - with some also capable of running on 100% biofuel, such as 100% hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). The first problem with these boilers is that they usually promote continued use of fossil oil - with many manufactures and other proponents recommending a kerosene-biofuel blend, with fossil oil still making up 50 to 80 percent of that blend.

There are also a range of sustainability and human rights concerns with the biofuels or bio liquids that are being used in these boilers. Much of the biofuel used in Ireland is said to be made from used cooking oil. But this isn’t used cooking oil from a local restaurant - instead the vast majority is imported; in 2021 62% of Irish used cooking oil was sourced from Asia alone. Waste is not a scalable energy source: waste sourced from Ireland can meet only 4% of our total energy demand. There are serious concerns that some feedstock labelled as used cooking oil is actually palm oil. Decarbonisation policies that incentivise biofuels make used cooking oil fetch higher prices than palm oil, leading to fraud where palm oil is labelled as used cooking oil. 

Palm oil production ravages rainforests and peatlands and is responsible for devastating deforestation, fires, biodiversity loss, human rights abuses and carbon emissions.

Research has clearly shown that sustainability certification does not ensure environmental sustainability of palm oil production. Instead the palm oil industry has used sustainable certifications like the RSPO certification to greenwash corporate destruction and human rights abuses, while it continues to expand business, forest destruction and profits. 

Producing biofuels from crops isn’t a sustainable option either as it competes with food production, has questionable emissions savings and can also be associated with human rights abuses and damage to local habitats and biodiversity. 

The fossil fuel industry is also using biofuels to try and block and obstruct real climate solutions. The 'Alliance for Zero Carbon Heating' is coordinated by Fuels for Ireland, the fossil fuel lobbying organisation formerly known as the Irish Petroleum Industry Association. It has been pushing misinformation by claiming that the promotion of biofuels by the Government could remove the need for investment in climate solutions like heat pumps and retrofitting.