The Heated Terraces of Paris Are Safe. For Now.

Travel One of the more atmospheric elements of Paris in film of late, is the proliferation of gas heaters with their orange and red glow providing a romantic backdrop to illicit or tragic meetings in terraces.

But Jacques Boutault, mayor of the 2nd Arrondissement and a member of EELV, the French Green Party, has been campaigning to have them banned for their obvious environmental issues, the sheer extravagance of heating the outside in winter.

A ban was due to be brought in on the 1st June, but the the Paris Administrative Court have overturned the decision in favour of the cafe owner's complaints. The Atlantic explains:

"In its January ruling, a tribunal from the Paris Administrative Court ruled the city had not sufficiently justified why gas and not electric heaters had been banned, writing the city conducted “no serious study” showing gas heaters pollute more than electric ones. While electric heaters do not emit carbon dioxide as gas heaters do, they cause more than double the carbon-dioxide emissions of gas heaters during the production and distribution of electricity, according to a 2007 study by RTE, France’s Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, and ADEME, France’s Agency for the Environment and Energy Management, which the tribunal cited. The city maintains that gas heaters are worse because they dirty the air those near the heaters breathe."

In the comments, we're told that Germany has a different option. Blankets.