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

As Utah debates seasonal stove ban, Salt Lake County adopts stricter rules

The proposed state seasonal
ban affects 75% of the Utah
population. 

As Utahns debate a seemingly doomed proposal to ban seasonal stove use,  Utah’s most populous county enacted its own rules banning stove use on both mandatory and voluntary air actions days as of Jan. 1, 2016. In other counties, voluntary air action days continue to be voluntary.

This will impact about half of all wood burning appliances in the non-attainment counties and could contribute significantly to reducing wood smoke.  Salt Lake County has nearly 102,000 wood burning appliances, with fireplaces accounting for a majority of that with 60,000 units, according to EPA figures.  There are nearly 20,000 uncertified wood stoves and about the same number of pellet stoves and certified wood stoves.  

This stove inventory was provided by EPA who use a variety of databases and sources to estimate the deployment of wood burning devices.

The governor’s seasonal ban proposal that would impact 7 counties in and around Salt Lake City is drawing intense and sustained criticism from Utah residents, with only a few people speaking up in support of the ban.  It's also drawing national attention from the wood stove industry that wants a 2-stage system, where EPA certified stoves could be used in stage 1 and all stove use banned in stage 2.

On the other hand, Salt Lake County, which has a more than a third of the state’s population and nearly half of the population and half the stoves in the Wasatch front non-attainment area, went the opposite direction, including all stoves, certified and uncertified, in both stages of air action days.  “This is a significant measure and with more enforcement could achieve a quarter to a half of the reductions that the Governor's plan sought,” said John Ackerly, President of the Alliance for Green Heat.

The issue has become an emotionally charged debate about individual rights vs. government control, striking a nerve within a deeply conservative part of the country.  In the public hearings, many people have testified about not being able to afford any other fuel than wood, and not wanting to be forced to use fossil fuel when they can use a cheaper renewable. 

But for air quality officials, the issue is simply about cleaning up the air and meeting federal air quality goals that are tied to highway funding.  The discussion quickly becomes about what the state can enforce and what it can’t.  The problem is that the state compliance capacity is already overstretched, with little ability to take on wood stoves.

However, that is different in Salt Lake County, which is moving ahead to enact stricter rules.  The County has decided to undertake the investigations of wood burning on mandatory no burn days itself, instead of leaving those to the state, which now only issues the fine.  Typically the initial warning is viewed an education process that leads to compliance, so that while many $25 fines have been given, rarely has the maximum of $299 been imposed. 

The new Salt Lake County rules, which take effect on Jan. 1, 2016, were not a reaction to the governor’s proposal or a rejection of the stove industry’s recommendations.  The County's process began before the state's process and ended before the stove industry got involved and helped set up the advocacy group Utahns for Responsible Burning.

According to officials at the Salt Lake Country Health Department, there was virtually no support for exempting EPA certified stoves from the county rule.  Both certified and uncertified stoves can produce excessive smoke, depending on operator behavior and moisture content of wood, with uncertified ones performing worse, on average.  While most EPA certified stoves produce 2 to 4.5 grams of particulates an hour in the lab when they are tested with specially prepared dry wood, they often produce far more in the real world.

The Alliance for Green Heat is urging Utah officials to consider phasing out uncertified stoves, since reducing the number of wood stoves will have the biggest impact.  “It may be that only about half of wood burners are really burning responsibly, whether they own a certified or uncertified stove,” Ackerly said.  “The uncertified stoves made before 1988 are now obsolete and most should not be used in densely populated areas,” Ackerly continued.

The current debate over wood heating comes less than 2 years after the outdoor wood boiler industry fought against Utah regulations that would prevent the installation of wood boilers on the Wasatch Front.  That debate also brought national attention of industry who hired lobbyists in Utah.  The industry effort to keep the market for outdoor boilers open in the non-attainment area was partially based on the now discredited argument that outdoor boilers were cleaner than wood stoves.

That case, like the current debate, involved questions of emissions data from test labs vs. emissions in the real world, and the likelihood that operators would be burning responsibly.