With the recent misleading headlines in the press, you may be wondering if you can buy a woodburning stove still and if so, what will happen to it in 2022? Will you have to scrap it? Will you be banned from using it? Will you have wasted your money? Hopefully the below will answer these questions but in a nutshell, yes you can still buy a stove, no you will not be banned from using it and no, you will not have wasted your money. So lets put some meat on these bones….

Are woodburning stoves going to be banned?

Although some reports mentioned that the worst woodburning stoves would be banned, this isn’t correct. What the Clean Air Strategy says is that DEFRA “will ensure that only the cleanest stoves are available for sales by 2022”. In 2022, all stoves being sold will have to comply with the new EcoDesign requirements which the government will adopt in line with CE approval. We, as manufacturers, have been aware of the new requirements for some time and have been developing all new models to be EcoDesign ready. At present the majority of our stoves are EcoDesign ready and the few models which are not, will be within the next 12 months.

Woodburning stoves are not going to be banned but only EcoDesign models will be able to be sold from 2022.

With regards to fuels being burned, the Clean Air Strategy provides actions to reduce emissions at home. These include:

• Legislating to prohibit the sales of the most polluting fuels (such as housecoal and wet, unseasoned wood)
• Ensuring that only the cleanest of stoves are available for sale by 2022
• Changes will be made to existing smoke control legislation to make it easier to enforce
• Giving new powers to local authorities to take action in areas of high pollution
• Working across government to look at the opportunities to align our work on air quality, clean growth and fuel poverty in future policy design
• Developing a dedicated communications campaign targeted at domestic burners, to improve awareness of the environmental impact of their actions
• Working with industry to identify an appropriate test standard for new solid fuels entering the market

We support the strategy and as such are working to ensure that our entire range of stoves are EcoDesign ready long before the required date of 2022.

We support the use of “Ready To Burn” wood (logs with a guaranteed moisture content of no more than 20%) on our stoves. (Please visit www.woodsure.co.uk for more info)

The key part of the strategy is to make sure that we try to leave our environment in a better state than we found it. By choosing a woodburning stove from the ACR range, be it already from the EcoDesign approved range or the rest of the range, you are buying a clean stove which when burned with “Ready to Burn” wood will be far cleaner than when using a 30 year old stove, or an open fire with unseasoned wood.

If you purchase a non-EcoDesign stove now, you will not be expected to remove this in 2022. The Government have not indicated that they will be planning to have any stoves removed /un-installed which are not EcoDesign approved.