Wood pellet data is vital to understand contribution of pellet heating in America

 The Alliance for Green Heat submitted a public comment on the EIA's Densified Biomass Fuel Report earlier today. The EIA was gathering comments on a proposed three-year extension on the report along with specific questions on its function and use.

"The Alliance for Green Heat (AGH) would first like to thank the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) for giving the public an opportunity to submit comments on the proposed three-year extension to Form EIA-63C, “Densified Biomass Fuel Report.” As a national nonprofit that advocates for the reduction of fossil fuel heating through the responsible and sustainable use of wood and pellet heat, we are deeply invested in the outcome of the EIA and DOE’s decision to continue to collect data on pellets.

Summary: The EIA does not need to collect more information from pellet manufacturers. However, it does need to publicly release much more of the information it is gathering.

It is important for policymakers, environmental organizations, and the public to have a far more accurate understanding of the differences between how utility pellets are made, how premium heating pellets are made, and the carbon impacts of how they are used. Utility pellets have biodiversity, equity, and carbon impacts that are more serious than premium heating pellets based on their feedstock, the size and location of their manufacturing plants, and the enormous amount of waste heat that is lost when making electricity. Data gathered by the EIA provides some of the underlying metrics to understand those different impacts.

Wood pellets are an excellent low-carbon heating fuel for homes, businesses, and institutions. They will likely become an even greater complement to heat pumps in the future, based on the different pros and cons of each heating pathway as our energy grid seeks to keep up with increasing electric demand. Wood pellet production and use are also extremely important for better understanding air quality and whether states and air quality agencies have been able to increase the percentage of pellet stoves compared to wood stoves. Also, EIA data from their housing survey, part of the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, shows that wood pellets serve many very low-income homes. The 2020 data shows the income bracket with the highest reliance on pellet stoves compared to wood stoves is the $10,000 - $19,000 household income bracket. This makes wood pellets very relevant to the energy equity community.

Our industry and stakeholders have become used to seeing top-level data such as the wood pellet production capacity by region, overall production of heating vs. utility pellets, and domestic vs. foreign pellets. But to really appreciate the various roles this industry plays in providing renewable heating in America, we should all be versed in more granular detail.

For example, it is very important for government agencies, pellet stove manufacturers, pellet fuel distributors, retailers, and consumers to know the volume of:

• PFI certified domestic heating pellets made year-by-year,

• Non-PFI certified pellets made year-by-year if the percentage of bagged vs. bulk domestic heating pellets is trending up or down,

• Utility pellets used domestically,

• ENPlus A1 or A2 bulk heating pellets are made in the US (these would likely be bagged in Europe for residential distribution), and

• Compressed bricks, compressed logs, and briquettes made, year-by-year.

The EIA could also provide more detail about where wood comes from. It provides summary, top-level data, but we believe there is more data available that does not infringe on confidentiality.

A breakdown by state also tells an important story of pellet production in the United States. North Carolina, the top producer of industrial pellets for export, makes nearly as many pellets as the bottom 20 states combined - which produce heating pellets.

Response to EIA questions:

1. In response to the invitation to comment on the following statement: “(a) The proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of agency functions, including whether the information will have a practical utility,” AGH would like to highlight the value that the Densified Biomass Fuel Report provides to hundreds of stakeholders in the renewable energy space who need this information to assess the capacity of this sector. The data provided through the reports helps track trends in pellet production and increases the ability to produce accurate, science- based assessments on pellet heating. Without the Fuel Report, organizations would lose one of their most reliable and unbiased information sources on pellet data.

In the energy transition landscape that our nation is currently undertaking, being able to account for, and have accurate information on, all forms of renewable energy is paramount. If our nation’s leading agency on energy information is missing data and research on a large, mainstream, and established renewable energy source like biomass, the agency is failing to carry out its mission.

2. In response to the invitation to comment on the following statement: “(c) EIA can improve the quality, utility, and clarity of the information it will collect,” AGH would like to suggest that the EIA publish more of the data that it collects. Assuming no confidentiality conflicts, we believe publishing all gathered “Product Type” information is essential (e.g. amount of “Wood Pellets Premium (PFI certified) Bagged,” Wood Pellets Premium (PFI certified) Bulk”, etc.). Similarly, publishing data on “FeedStock Type” (e.g. “Roundwood,” “Sawdust,” “Waste Wood,” etc.) would be helpful when explaining to policymakers and the public the different supply chains in the pellet industry. This is particularly important for policymakers and the public to differentiate how heating vs. utility pellets are made. This would also provide industry and organizations with a clearer vision of the current capacity of biomass for heating, helping provide decision- makers with valid, data-driven information. Because this information is already gathered in the monthly reports, this would not add any time burdens on the pellet manufacturing companies.

Wood is a diverse and vital renewable energy source for America. Many Americans do not seem to know that up until 2015, wood produced more renewable energy than any other renewable source. Since 2016, biofuels have been the top producer, but the intensive process of converting solid biomass to biofuels sharply reduces its carbon benefits.

Many Americans may also be surprised that wood still produces more renewable energy than hydroelectric solar and geothermal combined. As recently as 2015, wood produced more energy than hydroelectric, solar, geothermal, and wind combined. It is a vital part of America’s transition to renewable energy to know that the use of wood as a renewable energy has been relatively stable but shrinking since 1985, and the amount of solar and wind energy has been rapidly growing. Part of this story is understanding and managing all the different feedstocks that go into wood energy - mainly pellets, wood chips, and wood logs.

The EIA can do a better job using the data that it collects from pellet manufacturers to tell a more detailed story about wood pellets made in America and pellet heating in America."

Meet the Teams: A father-son forge an entirely new breed of hybrid wood/pellet stoves

This post is the third in a series introducing the 12 teams participating in the 2018 Wood Stove Design Challenge in November.

By John Ackerly and Shoshana Rybeck, Alliance for Green Heat 

Dusty and his father with their stove. 

The stove is so novel that the EPA can’t figure out whether to call it a wood stove or a pellet stove. That’s because it’s neither—or both—depending on how you look at it.

The stove burns logs that are pressed out of sawdust. The logs are automatically fed by a gravity system one after the other. There is no auger, which all pellet stoves have, but the stove achieves consistently high efficiency and low emissions that no wood stove can get. It's the first one of its kind on the market, and the EPA and the entire stove industry doesn’t quite know what to call it yet.

This father-son run business team got into the industry after years of admiring the work of Frank Reed of Hayden, ID, a long time friend of the family. Reed first designed the stove on a dare in 2010 to prove that you can run a stove by burning a single log at a time. The stove had been heating his shop for 7 years. The son of the team, Dusty Henderson, kept asking Reed what he was planning on doing with the innovative design. Reed responded “nothing.” Dusty and his father then bought and patented the design, convinced that it was marketable and could fill an important gap in the residential wood and pellet stove market. 

With an educational background in criminal justice, Dusty would seem to be an unlikely entrepreneur to bring a novel stove to market. However, Dusty recalls being “mechanically inclined” from a young age and he always wanted to bring a product of his hard work to the marketplace. Dusty’s entrepreneurial drive along with his shared hobbies with his father first brought them to work together right after Dusty graduated college, when they began a contracting business together. Now, more than twenty five years later, Dusty and his father have developed Reed’s design, of which they have complete ownership.

Dusty says that they are committed to building such a high quality product that it should be a once in a lifetime purchase. They built the stove with premium parts, which are coated in quality paint with “no burn off whatsoever, smells, or off gasses.”

A different type of animal

509 Fabrication’s stove is unlike any other on the market in that it runs on compressed logs rather than cordwood or pellets. The stove, called the Optimum, continues to be classified as a pellet stove by the EPA, a strange designation since consumers are not allowed to burn pellets in it.  The EPA is increasingly focused on ensuring that stoves be advertised only to burn the fuel that they were tested with, as part of a renewed education effort. “Listing us as a pellet stove is not good for our business and we don’t want the EPA creating confusion about our product—which is already unique enough,” Dusty said. 

Final model of the stove heating
the showroom.

The Optimum burns one compressed log at a time, seamlessly from one end to another, and can be loaded with 3 logs at a time. Unlike a pellet stove, where the operator can adjust the amount of fuel going into the burn pot, the Optimum is adjusted solely by the amount of air getting to the fuel. Heat settings are controlled through the simple opening and closing of the air valve. 

Dusty and his father had to experiment with feed tubes and the early models used feed tubes at an angle, instead of vertically as they do now. The vertical feed tube allows for “more room to add heat exchangers” and ensures consistently high efficiencies at all burn rates. Getting the right amount of combustion air at each of the 3 heat settings was perhaps the biggest challenge. “A big issue was  finding the right fuel to air ratio, and then figuring out how to get that air to the right places,” Dusty said.  

This is one of the stoves competing in the 2018 Wood Stove Design Challenge that is already certified and on the market and thus has third party testing data available. The Optimum was certified at 1.5 grams of PM per hour and 78.8% efficiency and they post their lab report (pdf) on their website as required by the EPA, unlike some companies that still don't do that.  The report shows emission and efficiency levels at different heat setting and the Optimum may be the first wood or pellet stove to have such a high, steady efficiency, ranging between 77.2% and 79.5% on 6 test runs.

However, Dusty and his father went through many different prototypes until they landed on the final model shown above. The team constantly altered the models pre- and post-testing to improve efficiency, reliability, and overall quality. Below are a couple of the old prototypes that were ultimately changed to create the Optimum we see today. 

Early prototypes 

The Fuel

Dusty has seen the compressed log industry grow throughout the years. It continues to spread, even to far flung places like Alaska where cities and communities are battling excessive wood smoke and pressed logs could be a valuable fuel to help reduce emissions. The stove can be used with pressed logs made by a variety of companies across the US, including North Idaho Energy Logs, Lignetics in Sandpoint, ID, Home Fired Logs in Ferndale, WA, and Superior Pellet Fuels in North Pole, AK. What cannot be used in the stove are logs made with wax or coffee grounds. Those products typically emit far greater emissions and will clog up the Optimum and are often far more expensive than natural pressed logs, which like pellets, have no additives whatsoever.  Pressed logs and wood bricks are the same product in a different shape and they often cost about as much as cordwood when measured by BTUs that go into the house. Cordwood is much cheaper by volume but is much less dense, and cord wood stoves usually only get between 60-70% efficiency.

From the Challenge to the market 

509 Fabrications is currently looking to expand their market penetration, a common goal for most stove manufacturers. Many stove dealers have non-compete agreements where they cannot sell other brands of pellet stoves, but these would not apply to the Optimum. The company is also looking for more recognition from change out and incentive programs, as their hybrid stove may appeal to people who have burned cord wood, while putting out consistently low PM like a pellet stove.

Final model of the Optimum stove

 ready for shipment.

At the Design Challenge in November the stove will be tested again to see if it can meet—or exceed—the emissions and efficiency of other stoves in the competition. All of its other features and controls will also be assessed by a team of independent experts. Only a few stoves will win awards at the event and all will be ranked against one another.  

Click here to learn more about 509 Fabrications and the Optimum. 

Connect with the team

Dusty Henderson 

dusty@509fab.com

US to begin mandatory survey of wood pellet varieties, volumes and ingredients

Rosalie Bianco founded Boulder-based
New Earth Pellets using bark beetle-damaged
trees to make the pellets.  Her company, like
others, will  have to start filling out this
survey in 2016. 

Dec. 2016 update - The EIA released its first data set showing production of wood pellets by state, region and capacity. Reports will be issued monthly.

June 2015 - The US government is poised to begin a monthly survey of pellet producers, much like it conducts similar surveys for coal, oil, gas, and other renewable technologies like solar panels.  The Alliance for Green Heat has been part of a coalition urging the government to include thermal biomass in reports, policies and data collection initiatives.

Some pellet manufacturers may say, “be careful what you wish for, lest it may come true.”  Efforts by the Pellet Fuels Institute and others to gather information about how many pellets are being produced each year have been met with resistance by many manufacturers. 

In contrast, response rates to surveys by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) are often 100% according to EIA staff because response to the EIA energy surveys is mandatory pursuant to Section 13(b) of the Federal Energy Administration Act of 1974.  Failure to respond to EIA surveys is punishable by significant fines.

The EIA-63C "Densified Biomass Fuel Report” will require any company that produces more than 10,000 tons (the EIA expects there to be about 150) to fill out the survey monthly, which the EIA estimates will take one hour to complete.  The EIA aggregates the survey responses and does not release any company specific data, a strict rule that follows with all energy surveys.

The EIA is an independent information agency within the Department of Energy.  Its long hallways are filled with wonky number crunchers who produce some of the most important data that industry and government rely on to understand energy markets.  Thermal biomass being selected at long last to join the club of major energy producers shows recognition of its contributions to heat homes and institutions across America is growing.

The EIA wants to know how much PFI certified and non-certified pellets manufacturers are making for both the bulk and bagged market.  For the PFI certified pellets, the EIA wants to know whether they are premium grade, standard or utility grade.

The survey also asks if pellets are being sold domestically or to foreign markets and even why plants may not be operating at full capacity.  The survey asks if extrusion machinery was not fully utilized, was it a shortage of raw materials, drying capacity, grinding capacity, or lack of a market for them?

As pellet exports for European electric plants have become more controversial, one relevant part of the survey covers the origin of wood fiber.  The survey lists 10 possible sources of fiber: from pulp wood quality roundwood to wood chips to logging residues to sawdust.  Then, it asks if this fiber is from a natural private forest, a planted private forest, or public land.  See more in chart below:

In addition to pellets, the survey includes other densified biomass such as wood bricks, wood logs and briquettes.  The results will likely show a rapidly expanding wood brick/log sector, which has the potential to produce far cleaner fuels than cordwood in residential wood stoves.  However, there is no quality certification process for these types of densified biomass in place yet, as there is for pellets.  As this market matures and supply begins to meet demand in upcoming years, there is likely to be more focus on the ingredients used in the fuel, just as there is now with pellets.

“This survey is a sign that the US government is taking thermal biomass more seriously,” said John Ackerly, President of the Alliance for Green Heat.  “Pellets can provide a clean and efficient alternative to fossil fuels to heat our homes and buildings.  We applaud the EIA for agreeing to undertake this survey so that all stakeholders can have a level of detail and transparency,” Ackerly added.

The survey has already been through one public comment period, where major stakeholders, including the Alliance for Green Heat, provided feedback and suggestions to the EIA.  It is now being sent out for a second 30-day public comment period.