President Carter, an early champion of modern wood stoves, installed them in the White House

President Carter next to a White House
fireplace.  We could not find any photo
of him with wood stoves.

  

A letter from the White House.

 

 

Carter praised new, secondary burn technology emerging in the 1970s, before EPA regulations

President Carter is well known for installing solar panels on the White House and for urging Americans to turn down the thermostat and wear a sweater. But he was also a very public advocate or wood stoves and had about six of them installed in the White House and at Camp David. 

President Carter took office on Jan. 27, 1977, four years after the oil embargo that led to the embrace of wood stoves by a wide swath of rural and suburban Americans.  Carter took a personal interest in the technology and by 1979, the absolute height of wood stove sales in the US, Carter wanted to “persuade any remaining skeptics that wood burning stoves can be efficient, clean, fume-free and money saving.,” according to an article from the New York Times. 

Ironically, President Carter was touting the old, uncertified stoves that were just beginning to adopt effective secondary burn technology. “Fume-free” may be a nod toward “airtight” stoves that could be completely deprived of air but were a big advance in terms of not leaking smoke into the room. 
 

Carter’s task of convincing Americans that wood stoves were not just your grandparent’s technology, is a refrain that stove advocates today have to keep using, because the details of wood stove technology are still a niche interest. And, little did Carter realize at the time that the pellet stove, a completely new wood burning technology was about to hit the market. 

Carter installed the first wood stove in his second-floor study in 1978, or possibly early 1979, and up to 5 more were installed in the White House and Camp David.  The man he appointed as his administrator of the EPA, Douglas Costle cared about clean air, but apparently no one yet realized how much the annual sales of wood stoves would add up in rural communities.  Costle later became the Dean of the Vermont Law School, from 1987 to 1991 and passed away in 2019.
 
After President Carter said he would install a stove, the White House had more than 50 offers from manufacturers. The White House staff carefully selected six, choosing makers from different parts of the country. The companies, however, were not allowed to say that one of their stoves was selected for fear they would commercialize the info for their own profit.
The stoves selected by the Administration "are airtight, with blowers, filters, draft controls and safety features, all costing between $200 and $600, and capable of being installed in fireplaces or left free‐standing," according to one account.

A donated Abundant Life stove

 

One of the stoves was contributed by Representative Norman E. D'Amours, a New Hampshire Democrat, who presented it to Rosalynn Carter on a trip she made to that state. Another was given by the Wood and Stove Fireplace Journal, a trade magazine (a precursor to Richard Wright's Hearth & Home.) We also know that Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) urged  to install one from Vermont Castings. 
 
Another was donated by the Buck Stove Cooperation from North Carolina.  Carol Buckner, founder of the company, claims to have had one of his famous Buck Stoves installed there in 1979.  Carter may have also used a Schrader Wood Stove according to White House records.  

A list of which models of stoves were installed, and what happened to them may be out there for a historical sleuth to uncover.  

It was only a few years later, in 1986, that Oregon set the first stove emissions standards, effectively banning the sale of most popular ones.  The EPA set their first regulations in 1988, but still today is trying to disentangle its regulations from the dimensional lumber test method they adopted from Oregon.
 
The EPA had high hopes for their regulations. One of their staff wrote in 1990: “it is hoped that over the next 15 years the 800,000 new wood stoves sold each year will gradually replace most of the 12 million older, dirtier models now in use.”  But wood stove sales fell quicker than expected and by the late 1990s, had settled to about 250,000 units a year. 
 
Many may believe Carter made a colossal mistake by getting behind the wood stove frenzy during that time, but as President, he felt some personal responsibility for the suffering that Americans were going through, trying to affordably heat their homes.  Part of his message was to “demonstrate that wood is a readily available alternative to nonrenewable fossil fuels.”  To this day, the EPA has never really acknowledged the ongoing role that wood and pellet heaters play in reducing fossil fuel. 
 
It is likely that the hype of new stove technology coming from Vermont Castings influenced Carter. In 1979, Vermont Castings was on the Fortune 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies, as a technology start up that was turning heads on Wall Street. The nation had yet to learn that even as stove technology made strides, and many more were forthcoming, they could still be operated poorly, causing excessive smoke.  This remains the quintessential issue with wood stoves, rendering lower EPA emissions thresholds vulnerable to the same problem: the operator and the often-wet wood loaded by the operator.

President Carter said that the new stoves were “absolutely remarkable.  They burn not only the wood but the gases from the wood.  They are highly efficient, have automatic thermostats and 2 or 3 oak logs … will last for as long as 8 or 10 hours.” 
 
This statement, in 1979, shows what many have forgotten: cleaner stove technology was emerging far before the EPA enacted its first set of regulations in 1988, but the majority of stoves being sold were mostly steel boxes with a chimney. Centuries of innovation in masonry and tile wood heaters in Europe had long been forgotten except for some advanced technology that Eva Horton, a woman from Maine, started to import from Norway in 1972, before the oil embargo. She came across a Jotul stove and realizing its potential in the United States, began importing them, providing a vital design reference for Duncan Syme and Murray Howell, who founded Vermont Castings in 1975.  Their first stove, the Defiant, set a standard that is still relevant today.  
 
On the West Coast, Bob Fisher, was also discovering important design elements in the early and mid-1970s, installing baffle plates and refractory brick, basic but vital elements to help smoke reburn before escaping out the chimney.  These were no doubt what President Carter was referring to when he marveled at the advanced designs. 
 
The wood stoves in the White House did not last long.  Carter’s successor, President Reagan, from southern California, may have removed them all, although one may have remained in Camp David for longer. There are 35 fireplaces in the White House and President Nixon is reported to have gone through 50 cords.  Carter only needed 10 cords and was able to provide some heating to the rooms they were in. 
 
Wood was used in the White House kitchen stoves in the early 1800s, but by the 1850s, some of all of the stoves were converted to coal, and later to gas, just like the fuel transition that happened in most homes.

White House kitchen coal stove, 1883

During the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the fireside chat in the Great Depression, symbolized a warm, folksy atmosphere. Still today, a fire in the White House figures frequently in the background of formal gatherings.  Fireplaces are the most antiquated, inefficient and polluting form of heating, which does not seem to be an issue for a succession of Administrations.  The fireplace after all, can be a symbol of wealth and status, as opposed to the more efficient, cleaner wood stove, a symbol of rural low- or middle-income homes.  The willingness to burn fuel, without getting hardly any heat, is still common across America, in part because so many people like smell of an open fire.

It’s hard to measure President Carter’s legacy in promoting improved stove technology and how it can help families reduce expensive fossil fuel. In retrospect, it was a missed opportunity for the government to invest in more lasting and well-funded programs at the EPA and DOE to better understand how to regulate and accelerate R&D.  Instead, as Washington looked to other renewables, it allowed unregulated outdoor wood boilers to take off and for uncertified wood stoves to stay on the market until 2015.  And the EPA never made concerted efforts to promote the pellet stove over the cord wood stove, despite its mission to promote lower emission technologies. 

 

Unlike in the US, Europe continued to focus on energy efficiency and renewables after the oil embargo of 1973.  If Carter had a second term, he may have been able to make a more enduring energy efficiency legacy.  

 

Carter's childhood home's wood stove

Since President Carter left office, its not clear if anyone asked him about his efforts to promote wood stoves.  We hope that future US Presidents appreciate the value of R&D in wood stoves because they have had and will continue to have a remarkable staying power in American homes.  And, just as President Carter wanted, they continue to be one of the most widespread technologies helping to get Americans off of fossil fuel.