The woodpile is a forum for discussion of the future of residential wood heating in an era of uncertainty about conventional energy price and supply and concerns over the health impacts of wood smoke.

To state our views up front: We heat with wood for several good reasons, but we don’t like wood smoke and want to do everything we can to reduce it. One of our interests is to engage those who express anti-wood burning views and promote anti-wood burning policies to help them see that an anti-wood smoke stance is likely to be more productive in the long run. Plus they’ll have us as allies. Having spent much of our working lives in the wood burning field, we know the technical and policy issues and, being wood burners ourselves, we know why people heat with wood and what can be done to help them burn wood better.

Who are we? Find out here.

The problem of wood smoke in populated areas has led to negative news stories and laws that restrict the use of home heating equipment that burns firewood. Anger about wood smoke and its health effects has created a kind of backlash, with vocal activists claiming serious health effects from wood smoke and promoting outright bans on residential wood heating. These anti-wood heating activists have had some success in seeding the public discourse with a negative image of wood heating and enabling local governments to prohibit the use of firewood for home heating. At the other extreme are some users who either ignore the complaints or respond by rejecting any interference in their use of wood fuel.

Somewhere between the extremes of angry activists and resistant users is a middle ground where wood heating can be discussed in a thoughtful, comprehensive way. Acknowledging that wood is an imperfect fuel (like all others) is a good starting point, but from there the challenge is to define the conditions under which wood is a viable and acceptable renewable energy resource.

By wood heating we mean with firewood because that is where the problems are. We don’t include pellet heating within our mandate for two good reasons. First, pellet heating is not under attack. It has a good public image and is often seen as the proper substitute for heating with firewood because it tends to create lower particulate emissions than conventional wood burning equipment. And second, pellet heating has corporate advocates in the form of pellet manufacturers and their trade association, the Pellet Fuels Institute, that do a good job of defending and promoting their product. The pellet industry and users of the fuel don’t need us to defend them. The average families that heat their homes with wood, however, have few vocal defenders, but a lot of powerful critics.

The Woodpile is a place for the discussion of wood as a home heating fuel. The discussion will necessarily touch on every dimension of the issue, from greenhouse gas emissions to sustainable forestry practices, from net energy to the deeply personal attachment to the fire, and from health impacts to combustion technologies. The discussion will be respectful and fact based; opinions can be freely expressed but we ask that statements of fact be backed up with evidence.

We hope you find the Woodpile a useful place for the exploration of issues related to the future of our oldest fuel. We’ll be posting feature articles often and compiling news and commentary summaries about wood burning so you can stay informed about developments as they happen. Come back often and please do share your thoughts with other readers.