Heated Up!: Photo essay: wood stoves around the world

Monday, October 6, 2014

Photo essay: wood stoves around the world

(Updated, March 2022) Heating with wood stoves is common in many countries around the globe, particularly in rural areas where wood is plentiful. Wood heating is also tied to poverty to a certain extent in most countries and can rapidly grow when fossil fuel prices spike.

We show typical wood heating stoves in 40 countries, though its impossible to capture a country's stove heating culture in a single photo. Most countries where wood heating is popular have a wide range of stove technology, from older, obsolete stoves to modern, expensive models. We focused on older stoves as they tend to be more common in most countries to show the widespread problem of aging stoves that need to be replaced with newer ones - or other affordable heat sources. Most countries have no regulations that set particular matter standards for new stoves. The issue of public funding for change out programs is often not an option.

We compiled a separate photo essay of firewood collecting cultures around the globe that tell equally important stories about the benefits of using a free, local fuel as well as the problems it can cause.

A home in the United States

Many countries are neglecting the development of a generation of cleaner wood and pellet heating stove technology. Wood stove technology is developing in many countries, as shown in some of the photos below. But the pace is far too slow to match the economic opportunity and environmental and benefits that wood offers, and the air quality dangers it can otherwise pose.

Over the last 10 years, we have seen populations turn to wood stoves in large numbers our of political and/or economic necessity. The invasion of Ukraine is driving increased energy prices, and thus the increased reliance on old and new stoves; the 2008 banking crisis in the US and Europe contributed to a meltdown in Greece, leading to widespread unemployment and a nationwide resurgence in wood stove use; incentive structures in the U.K. have led to more wood stoves, instead of pellet stoves.

These photos show how this ancient fuel source persists in helping to affordably keep people warm.