Despite the laws and propaganda that come from city hall, wood is a clean, sustainable form of energy.

Source: Mother Earth News

Wood, the oldest fuel source known to humans, may be about to experience a renaissance, thanks to rising oil and gas costs combined with shrinking bank accounts. Ultra-efficient, ultra-clean advanced wood combustion technology and fast-growing “perpetual” fuel woods can, on the micro level, bring increased home heating security for landowners and, on the macro level, create a regenerative fuel source for electricity generation.

How does fuel wood combat climate change? Wood is often considered “carbon neutral,” because growing it pulls as much carbon dioxide out of the air as is released into the atmosphere when it’s burned. So, unlike gas or oil, it releases no net carbon. It is a closed-loop energy source, simply recirculating the carbon dioxide already within the Earth’s carbon cycle.

An analysis led by Daniel D. Richter, professor of soils and forest ecology at Duke University, proposes we are missing a key strategy in our search for sustainable energy solutions. Richter says we need to consider advanced wood combustion, which he defines as “automated, high-efficiency wood-fired energy generation systems with strict air pollution control.”

The analysis was detailed by Richter and a multidisciplinary team of experts in the March 13, 2009 issue of Science magazine, and points out that creating thermal and electrical energy with advanced wood combustion has been growing quickly throughout Europe. “These facilities release remarkably low quantities of air pollutants and have system-wide thermal efficiencies approaching 90 percent,” Richter says. According to the article, the cost of wood fuel is several times cheaper than fossil fuel costs (per unit of energy produced).

The authors of the Science article say the United States is well-suited for sustaining a wood-energy economy. Yet currently, energy from wood provides only about 2 to 3 percent of total U.S. energy consumption. This is about half of the potential annual sustainable wood supply available to us for power generation.

The report also identifies “waste” wood as an untapped asset, estimating that 30 million tons of urban wood per year can be safely burned for energy. For example, the District Energy program in St. Paul, Minn., burns 250,000 tons of waste wood and other biomass per year to provide heating, cooling and other energy to part of the city.

Continue reading this article…

I just can’t beleive that wood stoves on the island are responsible for significant air pollution in the winter.

One look at Decarie “expressway” during a snow storm, and you know that cars are far more damaging to air quality than 15,000 homes burning clean, EPA-approved wood stoves that burn efficiently and cleanly. The only question is: do people have clean buring woodstoves or are they just creating bonfires in their back yard?

Via: Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL – The number of days of poor air quality on Montreal Island shot up to 68 last year from 44 days during 2007, the city’s air-quality watchdogs said Saturday.

The Réseau de surveillance de la qualité de l’air, or RSQA, placed the blame for that deteriorating air-quality performance squarely on fine-particulate air pollution – largely caused by the use of residential wood heat.

“The contribution of wood heat to fine-particulate emissions continues to grow and amounted in 2006 to about 61 per cent of the total estimated emissions,” the body’s freshly released eight-page annual report for 2008 states.

“That’s much more than the portion attributable to transportation – 14 per cent – and even industrial sources, at 22 per cent,” the report added, citing a national pollution inventory produced by Environment Canada.

Sulphur-dioxide levels measured in the air over Montreal Island, meanwhile, dropped an average of 24 per cent last year compared with 2007 levels.

Atmospheric concentrations of benzene dropped 27 per cent, the RSQA also reported.

For both those pollutants, “those are the lowest levels in 40 years,” declared Alan DeSousa, mayor of the St. Laurent borough.

Those results were largely due to a crackdown on industrial and petrochemical operators on the eastern part of the island, DeSousa added.

He is also the member of the city’s executive committee responsible for sustainable development and the environment.

“The 2008 results are an encouraging sign,” DeSousa declared.

“In the last 25 years we’ve reduced industrial pollutants by 50 per cent,” he added.

But, he said, “fine-particulate emissions is where we have the most work to do.”

On April 28, Montreal city council unanimously passed a bylaw that outlaws the installation of new wood-burning appliances such as stoves and fireplaces.

While Montrealers won’t be able to install a wood-burning stove in their homes, wood pellet, natural gas and electric stoves are still allowed.

And no measures have been taken to deal with the 50,500 households across the city of Montreal equipped with wood stoves or fireplaces when the bylaw was passed.

If all those Montrealers use them for nine hours at the same time, DeSousa said, the air pollution produced would equal that of 1.5 million cars driving 18,000 kilometres.

When will the car driving madmen be stopped? All I want to do is heat my home! Shakes head and mutters under breath…

The #1 cause of smog in Montreal is cars and trucks – not wood stoves. And, this measure grandfathers in existing wood stoves while doing nothing to update older, more polluting stoves. If the city were serious, they would offer financial incentives for old wood stove owners to upgrade to less polluting stoves. This policy, by the way, was effectively used in the U.S. to replace older, polluting cars in the 1980’s and 90’s with less polluting ones.

Via: pgcitizen.ca

MONTREAL – Montreal’s city government is considering a law to ban wood stoves in a bid to fight smog.

The law, which is being touted as one of the strictest in Canada, would prevent people from installing wood stoves in new or existing residential homes.

Stoves that burn wood pellets will still be allowed as will wood stoves in such businesses as restaurants.

Alan DeSousa, the city’s executive committee member responsible for sustainable development, says smog has been a particular problem in Montreal this winter.

Environment Canada has issued 25 smog alerts for Montreal so far this winter.

Montreal has about 50,000 wood stoves on its territory and DeSousa says banning them will contribute to preventing premature deaths caused by bad air quality.