THE financial and practical difficulties of “going green”, which individual churches faced when trying to aspire to the Church of England’s target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030, were highlighted in the Consistory Court when a gas boiler that was used for church-hall facilities for the congregation and wider community broke down.
After an amendment to the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015, a faculty must now be obtained when a parish seeks to replace a gas boiler with a new gas boiler. Before the amendment, certain works which could be undertaken without a faculty, subject to consultation with the archdeacon, included the replacement of a boiler in the same location, and using an existing fuel supply and existing pipe runs.
In 2020, however, the General Synod set the Church of England a target to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 (News, 14 February 2020), and, in 2022, the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules were amended so that a faculty was needed unless the new boiler would have a non-fossil-fuel supply.
A petition was brought before the Consistory Court of the diocese of Southwark for an interim faculty to replace a gas boiler that had broken down at the Holy Saviour’s, Croydon. The PCC and churchwardens investigated options for a replacement, and, having regard to the Church of England’s aspiration of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030, and Southwark diocese’s aspiration to achieve that target by 2035, the initial preference was to replace the gas boiler with an electric one.
The DAC counselled caution, however, because it was thought that currently a significant proportion of electricity to the national grid was being generated by power stations using fossil fuels. But the primary concern for caution was cost. The running cost of electricity was roughly four times that of gas.
The PCC then reconsidered the matter and regretfully concluded that it would not be able to afford the running costs of an electric boiler. Having looked at all other options, the PCC concluded that the only affordable and practical option was to replace the existing gas boiler with a new gas boiler.
Chancellor Philip Petchey said that this was the first case of which he was aware to which the amendments to the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules applied. It was difficult to achieve carbon neutrality, because it was expensive, and was a financial burden on a parish.
The approach to faculty petitions which involved issues relating to carbon neutrality was, the Chancellor said, to require the petitioners to demonstrate that they had carefully considered the issues arising. If they had done so, and had reached a considered view that a greener option was not available or appropriate, the Chancellor would not seek to second-guess their decision.
He had never had a case, the Chancellor said, in which the proposal had not been recommended by the DAC, and he worked on the assumption that the DAC took a broadly similar approach to the one that he took. If the Chancellor refused permission for a proposal on the basis that it was not green, or not sufficiently green, he would be imposing a financial burden on a parish which it could not reasonably bear.
The principal reason for the amendment to the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules was one of encouragement, the Chancellor said, but, if the change was to be meaningful, it must envisage circumstances in which the Consistory Court might refuse permission for replacement of a gas boiler with another gas boiler. One such circumstance might be where the court considered that the consideration of the issues by the petitioners and the DAC was inadequate. It was unlikely that the court would, without evidence, be able to substitute its own judgment of what was appropriate.
In the present case, the Chancellor was satisfied that the petitioners had considered all the available options, and that there was no alternative at reasonable cost to replacing the existing gas boiler with another gas boiler. In the circumstances, the urgency of the situation was a strong justification for granting the interim faculty.
The Chancellor observed that, at the moment, the Church of England was able to recommend to parishes only two suppliers of green gas. One of those suppliers was unable to give a quote for a new supply, or to take on new customers, because of the current unprecedented market volatility. The position was likely to be the same with the other supplier. When green gas was available, it was more expensive than fossil-based gas.
The use of green gas was not a viable option at present. The use of the words “so far as practicable” included in a petition could, however, address that difficulty. More fundamental was a concern as to what “so far as practicable” meant in that context. “Practicability would evidently need to embrace affordability,” the Chancellor said, “but who was to be the judge of that?”
It seemed to him, the Chancellor said, that this parish was, in good faith, doing all that it could to achieve the target of carbon neutrality by 2035. A general condition requiring it “to pursue carbon neutrality would be aspirational, not necessary, and probably unenforceable”, and it would not be appropriate to impose it.