RE: "Pollution is more of a result of the fuel being burned than the device burning the fuel."
This is simply not true.
A good burning chamber can burn dirty fuel and emit near zero polutants. Gasoline, when burned in the open atmosphere, emits few polutants. Ignite it in the typical internal combustion engine and you have an engineered condition that creates nasty polutants from incompletely ignited fuels and other gases.