Fears surround EU plans to ban patio heaters - Telegraph 31/01/08

Fears surround EU plans to ban patio heaters

By Bruno Waterfield
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 31/01/2008

Patio heaters could be banned by the European Union over fears that they are contributing to global warming.

Patio heaters at a restaurant
Publicans has invested £86.5 million in
heaters over the past 12 months

Euro-MPs will today vote on energy efficiency proposals to phase out the sale of the popular gas-burning appliances which are increasingly found outside bars, cafés and restaurants since the indoor smoking ban.
# Patio heater ownership by region
# Patio heaters targeted over CO2 emissions
# Patio heaters compared

Fiona Hall, a Liberal Democrat MEP, has led the calls for the ban, which is expected to be endorsed by the parliament in Brussels.

"Patio heaters are scandalous because they are burning fossil fuels in the open sky, so producing vast quantities of CO2 with very little heat benefit," she said.

But the proposal has been attacked by publicans, who say bars and pubs need the heaters for customers driven outside by smoking bans.

The trade has invested £86.5 million in heaters over the past 12 months and a ban could cost pubs, cafés and restaurants an estimated £250 million a year in lost business.
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Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, said: "Not content with devastating the pub trade with the illiberal and ill-informed smoking ban, these autocratic busybodies now want to make smokers stand in the cold and the rain.

"We are constantly being told that the continental café culture is something to aspire to.

"But a ban like this will hammer the cafés of Brussels, Stockholm and Copenhagen just as surely as the pubs of Leeds and Sevenoaks."

A UN climate expert questioned the usefulness of a ban.

"The overall impact of outdoor heaters on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions is very minimal," said Dr Eric Johnson, of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

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