There was a tendency during the development of the first round of EPA’s wood stove emissions regulations in the 1980s to rely exclusively on science and technology to reduce emissions from wood heaters. This made perfect sense at the time because most wood stoves were crude boxes with virtually no emission control technologies.

Unfortunately, a repeat of this approach appears to be reflected in much of the recent commentary surrounding the EPA New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) review process. Unfortunate because this repeat of the reliance entirely on technology can result in appliances that burn cleanly under laboratory conditions through increased technological complexity but which do not meet user needs. This could produce disappointing emission reduction results in actual use.

Journalists Say Yes, But Statistics Say Maybe Not

The opening paragraph of some newspaper and magazine articles about wood heating make the claim that more households are burning wood due to the high cost of conventional energy sources. This assumption is logical enough considering there is plenty of income insecurity and increasing costs lately. But a review of the few available sources of statistics calls this conclusion into question.

An updated version of the woodheat.org web site was put online on January 12, 2011.

The rebuild was necessary because the software used since 2000 became obsolete a few years ago. Since each of the more than 120 articles on the site had to be reformatted with the new software, we used the opportunity to review them all and rewrite a fair number to bring them up to date. It had been several years since we had looked at some articles, so serious maintenance was overdue. The entire process took more than four months.

Energy is actively debated on several fronts these days. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, drilling in the arctic, and the Alberta tar sands spark debate about the environmental wisdom of continued oil exploitation. Climate change is caused mainly by the combustion of fossil fuels, something that goes on at a spectacular rate around the world. Peak oil - meaning the maximum possible global production rate of conventional oil - has entered the mainstream discussion after a decade of lurking in the shadows.

But judged by policy discussions about our energy future, wood heating is virtually nonexistent.

Wood stove dealers are often faced with challenging questions from customers or from reporters about the environmental suitability of wood as a home heating fuel. We thought up some really hard questions and answered them as briefly as possible. Vanessa Perciival, Ontario distributor of Jotul stoves and other brands, allowed us to publish the first five Straight Answers here on Nov. 23. Today's post is of answers six through ten. Here is an MS Word file of the whole set. Feel free to distribute the article provided you give suitable credit and don't alter it without permission.
John Gulland