Ad description

A national press ad for an electric heating provider, Sunflow Ltd, seen on 24 April 2016 stated "Did you know that gas and oil home heating is being phased out?* We will all have to choose an alternative". Text at the bottom of the page stated "*Climate Change Act 2008, ratified in Paris December 2015". The ad also included the text “Replacement Service … Sunflow can take the worry out of disposing old central heating systems. We offer the safe removal of gas, oil and lpg systems”.

Issue

Eleven complainants challenged whether the claim "Did you know that gas and oil home heating is being phased out? We will all have to choose an alternative" was misleading and could be substantiated.

Response

Sunflow Ltd believed the ad communicated that the 2008 Climate Change Act (CCA) indicated that gas and oil home heating were being phased out as it established a legally binding target to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% below base year levels by 2050. In addition, the Fifth Carbon Budget set a target of a 57% reduction in emissions by 2030 and, under the EU 2020 climate & energy package, the UK was committed to binding annual targets to reduce emissions in housing by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. Sunflow said that in order to meet those obligations, fossil fuels, such oil and gas, which were not carbon neutral, needed to be phased out, and that the government had indicated that domestic heating was one of the primary sectors to be affected. They said the government was due to make an announcement by the end of 2016 on how it would meet the Fifth Carbon Budget target, and that this announcement would likely include more information on plans to phase out oil and gas home heating.

Sunflow referred to the government’s Carbon Plan report, which stated that to achieve the reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2050, "the oil and gas used to drive cars, heat buildings and power industry will, in large part, need to be replaced by electricity, sustainable bioenergy, or hydrogen". It further stated that "in this decade we also need to support ways of heating buildings without emitting carbon" and "130,000 low carbon heat installations are expected to be carried out by 2020". The report also stated that "during the 2020s, we need to begin the mass deployment of low carbon heat" and that, in general, the next fifty years “will require the public to accept new infrastructure and changes to the way in which we heat homes". Sunflow further cited the report 'The Future of Heating' from the Department of Energy & Climate Change, which stated that “if the UK is to play its part in the global effort to combat climate change, we will need our buildings to be virtually zero carbon by 2050.” They also provided a letter from the government advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which said that there should be a switch away from gas heating to meet the Fifth Carbon Budget target.

Sunflow provided an article about the Paris climate change deal, in which the United Nations members committed to reduce greenhouse gases from 2020 onwards. The article quoted a university professor of energy policy who said that "… as we move through to the 2030s and beyond we’ll have to find new ways of heating our homes …”. The article also stated "experts predict the stricter targets will mean the familiar sights of … gas-fired boilers will become a thing of the past”. They also highlighted a quote in a separate article by a research institute director, who said that "the days of using gas are numbered" and "as the 15 years go by, homes with gas central heating could be worth less".

Sunflow also provided a copy of the National Infrastructure Commission’s (NIC) Smart Power report, the Carbon Trust’s Low Carbon Entrepreneurs report, and a number of further articles, blogs and web pages.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered that consumers were likely to understand the claim “did you know that gas and oil home heating is being phased out?” to mean that a formal process had been, or would soon be, initiated in which oil and gas home heating systems would gradually be withdrawn from the market. We considered that consumers were likely to interpret the claim “we will all have to choose an alternative” to be an objective statement that everyone would be required to replace oil and gas domestic heating systems with more environmentally friendly alternatives, while the ad’s offer of a “replacement service” for oil and gas heating systems contributed further to that impression.

We noted that the Climate Change Act established a legally binding target to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. The government had set out its vision on how it would achieve that in the Carbon Plan and Future of Heating reports, whereby it envisaged that nearly all oil and gas heating systems would be replaced by low carbon alternatives by 2050. The NIC and the Carbon Trust's reports outlined their visions of a future low-carbon economy, the CCC advised that there should be a switch away from gas heating, while the articles submitted by the advertiser showed that some commentators believed that domestic oil and gas heating would need to be replaced in the future. However, while the government had set out a number of proposed initiatives to achieve the 2050 target, with a further similar announcement to come, we had not seen any evidence that the government intended to initiate a formal process to withdraw oil and gas home heating systems from the market at the time the ad appeared. Furthermore, we understood the government’s vision did not include the entire removal of oil and gas home heating from the market. We therefore concluded the claims that the systems were being “phased out” and that consumers would “have to choose an alternative” to oil and gas heating, was misleading and had not been substantiated.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.  (Misleading Advertising) and  3.7 3.7 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.  (Substantiation).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Sunflow Ltd not to state that gas and oil home heating was being phased out, or to suggest that consumers would be required to replace their oil or gas heating systems, if that was not the case.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.7    


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