Climate change may snuff out the gas boiler

USING gas boilers to heat homes could be abandoned as governments face renewed calls for dramatic action to tackle climate change.

A major report on global warming, published today, will warn about the speed and scale of measures required to keep temperature rises to a level beyond which many vulnerable countries say their survival is at risk.

Limiting global temperature rises to 2.7F (1.5C) above pre-industrial levels would mean putting an end to burning fossil fuels to generate power. This would involve replacing petrol and diesel cars with electric vehicles or other clean alternatives and scrapping the use of gas boilers in homes in just a few decades.

Traditional boilers could be replaced with cleaner alternatives such as electric boilers that do not require the burning of fossil fuels to produce heat – if the electricity is produced by renewable sources.

Scientists and representatives of 195 governments who met in South Korea as part of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have approved the report, which will prompt calls for dramatic and urgent steps to cut emissions to zero by 2050.

The world is already experiencing around 1.8F (1C) of warming, and events such as floods, storms and heatwaves, such as the one in the UK this summer, have become more likely as a result, experts say.

Allowing temperatures to increase more than 2.7F (1.5C) would lead to sea level rises, an increase in heavy rainstorms and heatwaves, more people facing water scarcity and drought, greater spread of diseases and economic losses.

While previous assessments looked at a range of scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions and what they would mean for the planet, this new study spells out to governments that they are still not doing enough.

Neil Thorns, the director of Cafod, an international development charity, said: “This report proves that keeping global temperatures to 1.5C is a necessity, not an ambition.

“Faced with such information we cannot leave poor communities standing on the front line of this potential storm, we must act urgently.”