Petition against wood heating to prompt parliamentary debate

A citizens’ petition demanding stricter rules for wood heating in Brussels has collected more than 1,000 signatures.

This means that the petition’s creators will soon be heard in the Brussels Parliament’s environment committee.

The concerned Brussels residents argue that the Brussels regional government is doing too little to combat harmful emissions from wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. These household appliances became more popular during the energy crisis in 2022.

While only 0.2% of Brussels homes use wood heating, those stoves and fireplaces account for a quarter of the total emissions of particulate matter from heating in the region. Wood smoke also contains a lot of carcinogens.

“The Brussels government has completely neglected this problem, which is getting bigger, mainly due to a lack of awareness among citizens about the harmful effects of wood heating,” the petition states.

The Brussels government decided in June 2024 that visible and odorous smoke from wood burning will be banned in the region from 2025. Since then, it has also been forbidden to install second-hand stoves.

However, neither the Brussels government nor its environment administration, Brussels Environment, has publicised these new provisions, the citizens claim. Moreover, the glaring lack of Brussels government since the October local elections has hardly helped the situation.

In January, Brussels’ current environment minister Alain Maron said “nothing at all” has been done. He had promised that this situation should change in the course of next month, but this did not turn out to be the case.

At the time, Maron had promised that information on the Brussels Environment website would be updated to “draw attention to the most polluting appliances: the fireplaces and the wood-burning stoves dating from before 2007”.