by Will Jones
Homeowners are being forced to tear out air conditioning from their properties under Net Zero laws that prioritise “passive cooling” and only permit “active cooling” as a “last resort”. The Telegraph has the story.
Council planning officers ordered residents to remove air-con units over fears they produce too much carbon dioxide, stating they should only be used as a “last resort”.
The Net Zero clampdown is part of building regulations that state “active cooling” should only ever be allowed when all other means of “passive cooling”, such as opening windows or using fans, have been exhausted.
The Tories said Britain was being “kept in the dark ages” under a Net Zero mindset that denies people “modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries”.
Meanwhile, temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 40°C this week, with Britain sweltering under a record heatwave that has forced schools to close, brought trains to a halt and led to the Met Office issuing a red “risk-to-life” warning.
Widely published advice states planning permission is not required to install air-con. However, planning is required in certain situations, such as in conservation areas, and there are different rules for flats, leasehold homes, as well as shared buildings.
It means there is a risk units are installed under the assumption they are permitted, but are later caught by council enforcement officers.
In one of a string of cases uncovered by the Telegraph, a resident living in North London was forced to “permanently remove” two air-con units from the back of their home.
Planning inspectors working for Camden council said there was “no justification” for the air-con units and that they failed to comply with the local authority’s so-called “cooling hierarchy”.
In an appeal, the resident was told to open the windows and balcony doors of their first-floor flat to ventilate the property “by natural means”.
Their concerns about security were dismissed, with inspectors saying the risk was not “as great as those associated with ground floor windows” and that the windows could be shut at night.
Planning documents stated that “the main issue” of concern for inspectors was whether the “need for active cooling is justified, with particular regard to local policies” on energy.
Another resident was ordered to remove three air-con units from their property, despite complying with all planning requirements.
Camden council planning inspectors made “particular note” of the “absence of ceiling fans” in their home, even though it was not listed as a requirement.
Despite inspectors finding that they were “neither intrusive nor harmful” to the character of the local area, the resident was told to rip out the units.
They were eventually allowed to keep the air-con on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate – in spite of the council’s strict climate tests – by demonstrating that the property already had numerous eco upgrades such as solar panels.
Air-con engineers told the Telegraph that they had been called out to remove perfectly operational units worth thousands of pounds across London.
Worth reading in full.
Reducing carbon dioxide is going to acomplish exactly what?
Make the socialists feel good about themselves?
Well…seems so that even leftards in Spain are no so stupid to copy this british idiocy. Koodoos….there seem to be levels of idiocy amongst the leftards….go fool go, see who goes first belly up.
I find that opening windows and doors in the heat of the day heats the house rather than cooling it.
How can hot air provide cooling? I use indoor and outdoor thermometers to decide.
You open the windows in the evening, try and get through ventilation if needed with a fan set to draw cool air through. Then if you have a reasonbly well insulated building and if you close the windows (and the curtains on the sunny side) you will stay cool through the day.
But this supposes that your building is well insulated and will not heat up from the sun during the heat of the day. What lots of new build buildings in the UK did was to attempt to reduce heating requirements. Because Net Zero. So the windows are small and there is no cross ventilation, they are in fact as sealed tight as possible, and they act as sun traps. You come across reports of people in the recently built flats in the Olympic park area of East London having to check into hotels – they can have interior temps several degrees over the outside, and its quite dangerous for small babies or the fragile elderly.
The ridiculous thing is that they are adopting the Net Zero planning rules because global warming, which should lead them to forecast increased temperatures and to try and implement building codes which would protect against them. But instead what they do is build greenhouse apartments and then ban any effective cooling.
The state of mind around energy, heating, global warming is totally incoherent. As in, lets ban the extraction of North Sea oil and gas, and instead import the same oil and gas from Norway, who is extracting it a few miles to the north of UK waters. Or, lets ban any new gas generation, then when the hot weather comes and electricity demand rises, we won’t have generating capacity, so we’ll import it from Holland, who is generating it from … you guessed it …. gas!
But we are saving the planet and getting cheaper and more secure energy. And probably thinking of the children too. Just not the ones growing up in these splendid hermetically sealed sunny apartments.
NO ONE ever expects the Carbon Inquisition!
Just when you think government can’t get any dumber along come the Brits.
Houses built in Australia in the Spanish style need no air-conditioners, particularly urban and suburban areas.
Modern materials and methods from UK and US in non-rural areas are unsuitable for anywhere here.
I am totally opposed to all things Net Zero, advocate use of black and brown coal, oil and gas in abundance but economically.
There are many examples of how to use building materials and methods which provide passive cooling and heating appropriate to local environments, then most people for most of the time need no artificial aids to live comfortably.
Seems like grounds for a lawsuit. A heatwave is 25° in Scotland or North Ireland, 28° in central or southern England. Sure that’s normal weather other parts of the world, but if you need it to be cool, for whatever value of cool, council denying you the ability to cool your home strikes me as dangerously deluded and potentially unlawful.
The solution is simple. Get an EV with a robust cabin cooling system.
Hook the EV to charge and pump the cool air from the vehicle into the residence.
Rube Goldberg would be pleased.
Council planning officers ordered residents to remove air-con units over fears they produce too much carbon dioxide, stating they should only be used as a “last resort”.
What?
AC units do not produce CO2.
AC units are powered by electricity.
Whatever generates the electricity is the source of any/all CO2 emissions.
If AC units produce CO2, then so do EVs based on the same principles.