EPA watchdog issues second stinging report on the EPA’s wood heater program

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General found continued lack of enforcement of the EPA wood heater regulations, more than a year after its first major investigative report found similar issues. Unlike that in-depth report, this new report cites very specific details of instances where manufacturers and labs have violated EPA regulations.  It found that even when the EPA knew of significant violations, it did not take action to correct the problem.  

The wood heater manufacturing and test lab industry is a collegial community where members rarely publicly criticize other members, even when major violations of the EPA regulations are widely known. However, manufacturers often relay private complaints about their competitors to the EPA, putting the EPA on notice of a wealth of compliance issues.

“We call on EPA leadership to provide more resources toward the wood stove program and address systemic enforcement issues,” said John Ackerly, President of the Alliance for Green Heat. “Its also vital for the public to know that pellet stoves are not involved in much of this controversy and that many wood stove manufacturers make good products, follow the law and are being undercut by those who knowingly skirt regulations,” Mr. Ackerly said.

Over the last 15 years, the only entity that has consistently published specific instances of non-compliance is the Alliance for Green Heat (AGH) in its monthly newsletter, and on its website.  Like the EPA, AGH is often contacted by industry members who are troubled by the conduct of other members.  The OIG listed five instances of abuse that the EPA overlooked and failed to take sufficient action, but there are scores more.  For instance, the internet continues to be rife with the sale of uncertified wood heaters, including outdoor wood boilers, which the EPA has known about for years, and appears not to have done anything.

  

US Stove sold 4,321 stoves before they were certified

This week’s report from the OIG follows up on several high-profile cases that AGH has pressed the EPA to address, including widespread fraud at US Stove Company which the EPA has been silent on for 5 years. In that case, an employee of US Stove was outraged and blew the whistle on his company.  US Stove then sued the whistleblower, getting a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against him to shut him up, which the local Tennessee court said was “in the public interest.” 

 This week’s OIG report described how US Stove manufactured and sold 4,321 stoves before they were certified, and d859 of them were sold even before the test lab started testing the unit. Though the EPA had all of these details, it did lead to further action.

The stove in question was never officially recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  A list of wood and pellet stove recalls can be found here.

A second whistleblower came forward, providing extensive details of fraud to the EPA, imploring them to take action.  That person wrote: “To those of us who refused to cooperate with this fraud [at the US Stove Company], we had hoped that the EPA would step in, enforce its regulations, and thus provide some level of protection and dignity to whistleblowers. I expect US Stove may come after me, and possibly file a lawsuit against me, as they did with the first whistleblower. The company has dragged that man through the mud, and forced him to hire expensive lawyers, just because he was willing to stand up for EPA regulations.”

False advertising of efficiency

Another major issue that AGH has pursued over the years is false or misleading advertising of efficiency levels, often telling consumers that the unit is eligible for the IRS tax credit, which requires stoves to be 75% efficient, using the higher heating value (HHV). In one case, a test lab listed the stove at 70% efficient, but the manufacturer told consumers it was 75% efficient and eligible for the tax credit. The EPA sent the manufacturer a cease-and-desist request via email, which the manufacturer did not act upon.  The OIG report said the EPA could have revoked the certification of the stove but has not taken further action.  

 

False and misleading efficiency advertising was widespread up until 2021, when most manufacturers began to advertise the efficiency as reported by test lab, and listed in the EPA database of certified stoves. US Stove continued to falsely represent some of its units and declined to comment on the record. Stove Builder International, a large Canadian manufacturer insists that various interpretations of efficiency were acceptable until and unless the IRS defined “efficiency” more clearly. For example, some experts argue that if a stove reaches 75% efficiency on any official test burn, it can qualify even if the average efficiency of all four burns is less than 75%.

 

While the OIG vigorously raises the issue of false advertising of stove efficiencies, it is far from clear whether OECA even believes it has the authority to address efficiency.  Efficiency testing became mandatory in 2020 but the EPA began listing efficiencies in 2012. The EPA does not regulate efficiency, as most European countries do, allowing stoves as low as 51% efficient to be certified.

 

EPA lab served as own third-party certifier

One of the 5 incidents of concern in the OIG report included an EPA approved lab serving as its own third-party certifier of a test report it has produced.  Again, the EPA knew about this but did not revoke the certification and “the lab remained approved by the EPA.”  

 

Test labs are allowed to be third party certifiers and most of them are.  However, they cannot certify the results of stoves tested in their own lab.  PFS-TECO, Intertek, OMNI, RISE (Sweden) and SZU (Czech Republic) are both test labs and third-party certifiers.  PolyTest (Canada), ClearStak and the Danish Technological Institute are approved test labs but are not third-party certifiers. 

 

Deviation from test methods

A fourth concern raised by the OIG, which has already been resolved, involved Lamppa manufacturing who makes Kuuma wood furnaces.  Lamppa had obtained an alternative test method, but the test lab deviated from that method, due to complications.  The manufactured disclosed the deviation and explained why, and the EPA certified it anyway.  After 5 years, the EPA informed Lamp it would not recertify the unit, and Lamppa had to retest and recertify the unit.  

 

Recommendation to the EPA

 

The OIG listed several significant recommendations, some of which could be incorporated into the next set of wood stove regulations, known as New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), which the EPA is currently working on.

 

·      Including a federal criminal false statement clause into the wood heater certification application process, which would require manufacturers, but not necessarily retailers, to not make false statements in their advertising.

·      Develop procedures to revoke the approval of test labs that do not follow NSPS requirements.

·      Develop procedures to revoke the certification of wood heaters that do not coply with NSPS requirements.

·      Inform the OIG of investigations into fraud or abuse of the wood heater NSPS.

 The  OIG report can be found here. 

A Response to James Houck’s Indictment of the NSPS

A stove being tested at
Omni lab, where Jim
Houck used to work.

In the May issue of Hearth & Home magazine, James Houck wrote a lengthy criticism of the 1988 and 2015 NSPS,  Straight Talk”, in which he took the “gloves off ... to tell it like it is.” It is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the science and politics of regulating wood stoves.

But let’s take this a bit further and examine some of things that Jim Houck did not mention that also have implications for the future of wood heating in America. Houck states his premise is right up front:

“The 1988 NSPS was bad.  The 2015 NSPS is bad.  They are bad technically and they are bad for the hearth industry.  Certainly they have and will provide some environmental and health benefits, but they are poorly written, they have loopholes, they have cost the hearth industry dearly [and] they have allowed gamesmanship. [...] The blame cannot be put on regulators alone: those in the hearth industry also share some of it.”

Jim goes on to explain why we are going down the wrong path.  The 2015 NSPS essentially adopts the same test method as the 1988 one: a method based on grams per unit of time, not grams per unit of fuel, or better yet, grams per unit of heat.  He also very clearly shows how both the EPA and industry have ignored basic science by, for example, claiming that certified stoves reduce pollution far more than the data shows.  The best data shows an average decline in PM of nearly 50%, yet the EPA often claims its 75% and industry 90%.

The key question is, can manufacturers make genuinely cleaner stoves regardless of the EPA regulations?  Put another way, do manufacturers have the expertise and innovation necessary to take stoves to the next level despite poor regulations, or does the NSPS retard innovation and require that stoves continue to be designed according to faulty parameters?  There are good arguments on both sides of this debate. 

 

The lead author of the 2015 NSPS
was Gil Wood, at right, who retired
the day the final rule was published.

Two of the greatest threats to stoves burning clean in homes are things that Houck never mentioned: tuning primary air for cribwood, not cordwood, and the EPA requirement that stoves burn at a low burn rate.  Together, those requirements almost guarantee that cordwood stoves in homes are likely to produce smoke at their lowest burn rate.

Jim Houck does not mention the upcoming switch to cordwood testing laid out in the newest NSPS.  Nor does he mention that the cordwood test method will include a cold start.  Granted, emissions will still be measured in grams per hour and the process of getting to cordwood testing is fraught with scientific, political and legal potholes.  But industry, the EPA and other key stakeholders at least see the need and value of getting there.

Houck’s article is about non-catalytic stoves.  The testing, repeatability and other issues can be very different with catalytic and pellet stoves.  Together, pellet and catalytic stoves make up one third or more of stove sales.  It should not be anathema to recognize that other technologies can achieve greater repeatability in the lab and greater consistency between the lab and the living room.  Otherwise, it makes it sound that all biomass heaters are far dirtier in the homes than in labs which is not true with pellet stoves and boilers. If consistency is the goal, we need to focus on technologies which can do that best, including automated stoves that use sensors to regulate primary and secondary air.  Homeowners can never keep track of changing combustion conditions like an oxygen sensor can.

 

Automated stoves that help
ensure the stove gets enough air
during key parts of the burn
cycle can greatly reduce PM in
in real world use.

It’s also worthwhile looking at regulatory frameworks in other countries to see if better stoves emerge where they test using grams per unit of heat and avoid other pitfalls of our NSPS.  Looking at non-cat wood stoves produced by various European countries, New Zealand and elsewhere, I think we can pretty safely say that our non-cat stoves measure up very well, if not better than stoves from those countries.  Part of the answer is because regulations in those countries allow for a different set of loopholes and types of gamesmanship. 

The bottom line is that it appears that despite all the failings of the NSPS, it still may be one of the best regulatory systems anywhere for conventional wood stoves.  Europeans have advanced wood and pellet boiler technology faster than the US because higher heating fuel prices and policies promoting renewable energy have led to a greater demand for efficient technology. 

Houck says that the 1988 NSPS was bad and notes that hundreds of companies went out of business because of it.  But it did result in a new generation of cleaner stoves that appear to be about 50% cleaner.  Houck recalled that we are now saddled with the legacy of the 1988 test method thanks to one stubborn regulator who strongly advocated it and subsequent bureaucratic inertia.  Making radical changes to the NSPS is difficult for the EPA, due in part to its lack of resources—a condition which is likely to get worse under the current administration.  In fact, the lack of resources at the EPA could hobble the stove industry even more than the new regulations.  As it is now, there is only one official who does enforcement, which includes approving lab certifications.  If that person’s time were to be cut back even more, it could pose serious economic consequences for manufacturers trying to get stoves to market for the heating season.

In 1988, the EPA almost adopted a test method using the Condar, a very small portable dilution tunnel that uses larger filters.  Some data from the Masonry Heater Association shows that by simply using a larger filter to catch PM, the repeatability of testing can be significantly improved (powerpoint).  But any radical change to test methods would likely have to come from a transparent process driven by an institution that has the funding and credibility to carry it out.  

Extensive round robin testing in Europe
 coordinated by BeReal should expand our
understanding of repeatability.

Universities or labs could develop of a better test method, but stoves do not have the same level of R&D support from Congress, DOE or other potential major funders that other renewables have. In Europe, there is more public funding and the BeReal project is doing far more extensive round robin testing than what Houck describes in the US.  Some agencies and groups prefer to see stove technology stagnate and have its market share wither, due to antipathy or ambivalence toward this complicated creature that can be affordable to homeowners but too often noxious to neighbors.

We will never know what would have happened if the regulators had written better test methods.  Perhaps todays’ stoves would reduce PM by 60 or 70%, instead of the 50% that Houck cites.  We also don’t know how much better stoves will be 10 years from now after the 2015 NSPS plays out.  It appears that few stove manufacturers will go out of business this time around, partially because many of them also rely on profits from their gas stove lines.  But will the stoves really be cleaner in the hands of average homeowners?

Ben Myren, owner of one of the EPA
approved test labs, is a leader in
developing cord wood testing.  Here
he starts a cord wood test at the 2013
Wood Stove Design Challenge.

The NSPS is supposed to be updated every 8 years, so theoretically there will be regular opportunities to improve the testing process.  If we can get to cordwood testing in the next 5 years, possibly the next NSPS could move to testing grams per unit of heat.  Litigation over this NSPS may bring some relief to some boiler and furnace manufacturers and others, but it may have the opposite impact on support for wood heating among civil society in general. 

Attitudes of the general public that shape policies at all levels of government, our media, the non-profit sector, etc., will have to change if wood heating is really going to be a growing renewable energy technology.  We have hosted the Wood Stove Design Challenge, with the next one scheduled for November 2018, to see if we can focus attention and resources on genuine technological advances that make stoves cleaner in homes.  Public opinion will only change when stove technology changes and stoves become cleaner not just in the lab, but also in our communities.  The 2015 NSPS alone will not get us there, for all the reasons Jim Houck outlined, but it is still possible to get there.

#    #    #

A response from Scott Nichols on boiler repeatability

Scott Nichols, owner of Tarm Biomass that distributes European made boilers sent in a response to this blog and we reproduced it below.  Scott is also on the Board of Advisors of the Alliance for Green Heat.

I agree with a great deal of what Dr. Houck wrote.  The single biggest problem with emissions from wood burning is that old stock remains in the market.  

Inherent test variability for appliances designed to burn firewood is also a problem without a doubt.

Scott Nichols has been a leader in
installing modern, automated boilers
in institutions and homes in New England.

Of course, my world is now the boiler world and the some of the testing used for boilers solves several of the problems inherent with wood stove testing.  I’ll mention some of the differences, as It may spur some ideas as you think about testing for woodstoves.  

For instance:

1)      The partial thermal storage test method is a cold to cold test, which is more indicative of both worst case and standard conditions.

2)      Boiler PM is reported in lbs/MM Btu, which eliminates the appliance size conundrum that Dr. Houck mentions at length. 

Further:

1)      Boilers very often include lambda technology, which enables the boiler to react to real time stack conditions by adjusting combustion air to optimize combustion.  Lambda technology improves cleanliness by helping the appliance to accommodate various wood moistures, volatility of the fuel, size and shape of the fuel, draft, and other factors in real time.

2)      Some regulators are already thinking about how to encourage lambda technology because they know that outside of the lab, such technology can more closely provide results as tested in laboratories.

3)      Boilers are built much more robustly than stoves and usually do not use catalysts that deteriorate over time.  They therefore tend to produce as tested results for a longer period of time. 

4)      Thermal storage allows for what is effectively single burn rate operation.  In a laboratory that can result in 4 test runs in which the boiler operates identically from run to run at full output.  This enables more comparable data for each test even though each run is weighted differently.  

5)      Round robin lab testing of one of our boilers has been underway for months.  That testing has been funded by NYSERDA.  We don’t know the final results yet, but it is important to note that people are thinking about repeatability and are putting money behind learning more.  Initial results, before we were removed from the viewing process, indicated that repeatability was a problem. 

Problems with wood boiler testing that wood stoves don’t have:

1)      Boilers are tested in room temperature laboratories.  Outdoor boilers are therefore provided an efficiency advantage because jacket heat losses in the laboratory do not reflect the real world. 

2)      Wood fuel used in outdoor boilers is always the temperature of the outdoors in the real world, not room temperature.  If you put 150 pounds of wood in a boiler and it is 10 F outside, combustion will be substantially different than if that wood is 60 F warmer in a laboratory. 

New Paper Undermines Stove Industry Variability Study

A new paper written by Woodstock Soapstone, a New Hampshire wood stove manufacturer, calls a key stove industry study misleading and flawed.  The industry study says the inherent variability in wood stove testing suggests that the EPA cannot lower emissions standards below 4.5 grams an hour. 

The EPA posted the 7-page Woodstock Soapstone paper today as part of the official record that the EPA can use to determine the final rule due in February 2015.  It was written by the company’s CEO, Tom Morrissey, and says the industry variability study is “based on a data sample that is small, old and deeply flawed.” 

The late Paul Tiegs from OMNI
 test labs was a  prominent
critic of variability being caused
mainly by fuel.

Morrissey’s paper argues that variability has much more to do with whether a manufacturer is paying for emission certification than inherent variability in the combustion process. “When a manufacturer pays for certification testing, why are the results so much better than at any other time the same stove is tested?” Morrissey asks.  The Alliance for Green Heat believes, as the Morrissey paper also suggests, that test labs have a range of operating procedures allowed by the EPA that can result in variable emission results.  The late test lab icon Paul Tiegs, a founder of Omni test labs, became a champion of tightening testing protocols to achieve consistency in testing, and rejected the notion that variability was mainly caused by solid fuel, as the industry study argues.

If the EPA, states, and air agencies take the Woodstock Soapstone paper seriously, it could unhinge a major industry legal strategy in the fight against stricter air pollution limits.  Many officials in the EPA and state air agencies were already critical or at least skeptical of the industry variability study.  However, there has not been such a detailed critique from inside (or outside) the stove industry before this.

The variability study was produced and written by Rick Curkeet, a hearth products engineer at the Intertek testing lab and Robert Ferguson, a consultant who is now working for HPBA on the proposed EPA regulations.  It was released in October 2010 in anticipation of the proposed EPA regulations and is called the “EPA Wood Heater Test Method Variability Study: Analysis of Uncertainty, Repeatability and Reproducibility.” 

[Update: Rick Curkeet submitted a rebuttal to the Morrissey paper on Sept. 10 and it should be posted in the EPA docket soon. His 7-page rebuttal defends his original study and he concludes that he stands by his "analysis and conclusions."]  

The study showed that there is a very wide range of variability between proficiency testing and certification testing of wood stoves.  HPBA contends that “it is arbitrary for EPA to define ... a value that is lower than the precision range” of the test method.  HPBA says the minimum justifiable emission limit is 4.5 grams an hour, which Washington State adopted in 1995 and has since become a de facto national standard.  The variability study does not say who paid for it but HPBA confirmed that they provided partial funding and extensively vetted early drafts in late summer and early fall of 2010.

While Morrissey’s paper is by far the most direct critique of the variability study, most experts agree that the understanding of variability in wood stove testing can be assessed in many more ways than the data set used by this industry study.  For example, compliance test data could be used.  The EPA requires that all stoves be retested after they produce between 2,500 and 10,000 units.  This data, if it could be obtained from the EPA, would provide possibly a more important data set than the one the industry study chose to use.  Another data set will be from the “K list” changes.  Most stove manufacturers are re-certifying their stoves in advance of the new EPA rules so they will have 5 years before they have to test again.  HPBA has been encouraging its members to recertify stoves with “K list” changes as they are allowed to do by the EPA so that they won’t have to face higher testing costs that include cord wood testing and the uncertainty of a new test method that may be harder to pass.  HPBA had urged the EPA to grandfather all stoves under 4.5 grams an hour until 2020.  In any case, these retests will provide a new and better data set to assess variability.

Even if high variability could be established and confirmed using various approaches and data sets by independent experts, the poor relations between industry and state air agencies and other key players has undermined the ability of the two sides to agree on much.  At a November 2012 meeting in Minneapolis convened by NESCAUM, Greg Green of the EPA left the room and urged the two sides to talk more amongst themselves.  That strategy did not work and very little productive communication occurred for more than a year, a result that is likely not beneficial to the interests of HPBA industry members. 

Greg Green, Alison Simcox and Gil 
Wood of the EPA listening to testimony 
at the Boston hearing on the NSPS.

The hard line approach to critics is what prompted Morrissey to write his rebuttal of the variability study which begins as a defense of test reports of his own stoves that had been called into serious question by HPBA, Rick Curkeet and Roger Purinton at Jotul stoves in formal comments to the EPA.  Ironically, proof that catalytic or non-catallytic wood stoves can be consistently clean has become the biggest threat to the mainstream stove industry that HPBA represents.  This conflict between cleaner catalytic stoves and not-as-clean non-catalytic stoves became very heated and public in an EPA hearing in Boston on February 26, 2014.  But it was preceded by the release of study in 2013 by non-catalytic makers that dismissed the effectiveness of catalytic stoves to reduce wood smoke in real world settings.  If this public rift within HPBA had not happened, the stove industry would likely have made it through the EPA rule making with a much more unified voice. 

According to interviews with non-catalytic stove manufacturers, they felt it was vital for the EPA to understand that very low emission numbers from catalytic stoves in testing labs did not accurately reflect emissions in peoples’ homes as catalysts often clog, are not replaced, and are not properly engaged and used by consumers.  This issue has proved to be key because the EPA proposed emission limits of 1.3 grams an hour in 2020, a number that only a few catalytic stoves can appear to meet.  The company that has produced tests showing it can meet it is Woodstock Soapstone.

The Woodstock Soapstone defense of its test results and critique of the variability study comes at an important time when the EPA is finalizing its new wood heater standards, known as the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS).  It is believed that as of September or October, the EPA staff will have made most of their key decisions to send to Washington for review and approval by senior EPA officials and EPA lawyers.  Attempts between HPBA and air agencies to reach any agreements behind the scenes could still be fruitful, but time is running out.  And even if any agreements could be reached, the EPA may not adopt them.

The regulation and emission limits for outdoor wood boilers are also hotly contested but the testing variability for boilers is not a big issue, nor is it an issue with pellet stoves.  One solution, supported in part by the Alliance for Green Heat, would be to set separate emissions standards for pellet stoves, catalytic stoves and non-catalytic stoves, based on how clean each technology has become.  The argument for separating pellet stoves from cat and non-cat wood stoves may be even stronger because they use a different and very uniform fuel and are burned in a much more controlled combustion setting.  The Catalytic Hearth Caucus, of which Woodstock Soapstone is a member, strongly opposed separate emission limits for cat and non-cat stoves as well.  Ultimately, HPBA did not recommend setting separate emission limits that Jotul and other non-catalytic manufacturers initially appeared to support.  At this point in the process, the EPA may have already decided to set a single emission standard for these very different technologies, as they had proposed.

If senior leadership at EPA sees reliable data that at least one stove can consistently be tested under 1.3 grams an hour, they now have a better legal foundation to stick to their proposed 1.3 gram an hour standard.  And this is the nightmare scenario that HPBA and non-catalytic stove manufacturers fear.

Stove experts like Tom Morrissey, Robert Ferguson and Rick Curkeet are not only savvy about how stoves are tested, they are also skilled number crunchers.  Interpreting stove test data is like any other data set: it can yield very different conclusions based on what data is used, how it is interpreted and what statistical methods are applied.  The EPA in turn has to assess the reliability of each study and they can reasonably expect that their assessments will be challenged in court.

Tom Morrissey, top, 2nd from right and
the team that designed and built the
Ideal Steel for a 2013 competition

The stove that Tom Morrissey says is reliably and consistently less than 1.3 grams an hour was specifically built to win the 2013 Wood Stove Design Challenge, and it did. The Wood Stove Decathlon judged stove on 5 categories: emissions, efficiency, affordability, consumer appeal and innovation.  The Ideal Steel Hybrid is certified by the EPA at 1.0 grams an hour and gets 82% efficiency.  A second place winner, the Cape Cod, was a similar hybrid stove by Travis Industries that is certified at even lower  0.5 grams an hour.  Travis however does not say that they can reliably or consistently test at such low emission numbers, particularly with cord wood.  Woodstock Soapstone says testing shows that their Ideal Steel Hybrid is as clean with cord wood as it is with crib wood.

The Alliance for Green Heat promotes cleaner and more efficient residential wood heating to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and help families affordably heat their homes.  Founded in 2009, the Alliance is based in Takoma Park, Maryland and is registered as a non-profit, 501c3 educational organization.