An open letter to Mayors of Comox, Cumberland and Courtney about wood smoke

Dear Mayors Arnott, Baird and Wells,

As representatives of a pro-wood heating non-profit, the Alliance for Green Heat, we are writing to express concerns about information in the “Overturn the Ban” website.

We want you to know that there are many members of the hearth industry that support reasonable, health-based restrictions on wood stoves. We understand that the primary restriction in your towns are disallowing new installs of wood stoves, which is an imperfect, but reasonable strategy. Allowing or even requiring homes with existing stoves to upgrade to a new one and destroy the old one, is also reasonable. However, we do urge towns and cities not to restrict or ban the new installation of pellet stoves, as they burn consistently cleanly, something the Overturn the Ban site omits to mention. We also urge jurisdictions not to restrict or ban masonry heaters because they are typically very clean and efficient, though very expensive.

All renewables have limitations, and in communities with frequent inversions, wood stove installation and usage often need to be limited. Wood and pellet heaters have an important role to play in providing renewable energy in North America, but that does not mean they are well-suited for every community.  They are usually least well-suited in densely inhabited urban centers, but even in rural areas that experience frequent inversions, reasonable restrictions make sense.

The adjoining towns of Comox,
Cumberland and Courtney are at the  
center of this map on Vancouver
Island, British Columbia.

One troubling half-truth promoted by the website is that new wood stoves operate far more cleanly than old ones.  Any wood stove that is loaded with wet wood and/or not given enough air is more likely smolder  and thereby smoke terribly and easily emit 25 grams of PM2.5 per hour. Some estimates say that up to 50% of stove users do not use seasoned wood. An operator of a brand-new stove causing it to produce high emissions is unfortunately not a rare occurrence.  If an old and a new wood stove get the same dry wood or even semi dry wood, the new one will almost always burn cleaner.  However, that stove can still emit 5 grams an hour of PM or more, which is excessive during an inversion. 

 

New EPA regulations require that stoves not emit more than 2.5 grams an hour in a very controlled lab setting and in the hands of trained experts.  The EPA standard is not an estimate of emissions produced by homeowners, who may rarely achieve an average of 2.5 grams an hour. With pellet stoves, the emissions measured in the lab are consistent with the emissions in consumers' homes because the fuel is consistently dry and uniform, and the combustion chamber is automated.  

 

Masonry stoves tend to be consistently clean not just because of their design, which makes the fuel burn hot and fast, but also because of the culture of users of this niche technology. Their main distinguishing feature is the ability to store the heat from a short hot fire for slow release over a daily heating cycle. Seasoned cordwood burned this way has been demonstrated in real world testing to have PM2.5 emissions in the same range as pellet stoves

 

You should also know that most wood stove companies had a very good sales year in 2020, despite what they feared when Covid-19 began.  And, in the US Congress just passed a 26% tax credit for the most efficient stoves, so sales in the US by all the major manufacturers will be bolstered for the next three years.  

 

Possibly the top consumer education website on wood heat in North America is a Canadian one, Woodheat.org.  It wisely begins by saying, “wood heating can be done badly or well. Firewood can be harvested poorly, burned dirty and its heat wasted.”  Wood heating is done well depending on three things: a good stove, an experienced and attentive operator and seasoned wood.  

 

Please let us know if you have any questions and know that many of us who burn wood and pellets are responsible environmentalists.

 

Sincerely,

 

John Ackerly,

President

Maryland, US

 

Norbert Senf

Chairman of the Board

Quebec, Canada