
More Americans are turning to burning wood, in the form of wood pellets, to heat their homes in winter. As a result, demand for wood pellets could be on the rise. All this according to National Geographic.
The rise in prices for traditional home heating fuels is driving demand for wood and pellet fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that after declining in use throughout the ’80s and ’90s, wood for fuel has been on the rise for the past decade. It noted that households using wood as a main source of heat, including wood pellet stoves, increased from 1.87 million in 2005 to 2.47 million in 2011.
As wood experiences a resurgence in use, more Americans are turning to pellet stoves and furnaces to heat their homes. “Pellets are much cleaner in terms of emissions,” John Ackerly of the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit organization that advocates the use of high-efficiency wood for home heating, told National Geographic. “They are a low-moisture, consistent, dense wood product. Wood can be variable, and when people burn wet wood in a stove they produce a lot of emissions. Wood can be very operator-dependent.”
For information on pellet stoves for your home, contact St. Croix Stoves.
NWFA