It may be natural, but there’s little that is safe or environmentally sound about heating your home with wood.
Health Hazard
Wood smoke may smell good, but it is not good for you.Neither Sustainable Nor Carbon Neutral
Burning wood for energy releases more carbon than burning coal and it is speeding up climate warming. It also releases black carbon, a powerful short-lived pollutant, that can accelerate the melting and retreat of glaciers. There are alternatives. For everyday heating, mini-split air source heat pumps are an excellent option. They are often three to four times more efficient than electric baseboard heaters and can work in colder climates. For example, the community of Skidegate in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, placed heat pumps in every house, reducing the use of wood for home heating.Efficient propane stoves and heaters are an excellent complement to heat pumps and can provide top-up heating on very cold days as well as backup heating during power outages.
Most regional and municipal governments in British Columbia have been reluctant to deal with these issues, and tend to focus on wood stove exchange programs as the solution. Based on my current research, the vocal response by the wood-burning industry and its customers often drowns out reasoned discussion.
Citizen Science Is a Game Changer
Concerned citizens have set-up an extensive and growing network of low-cost air quality monitors made by PurpleAir. Kamloops, for example, with a topography that tends to trap air pollution from heavy industry and residential wood burning, has 30 of these WiFi-enabled, real-time sensors, as do hundreds of other communities around the world.Wood smoke and the cultural and social practices that allow it to be generated without much regulation and control operates in a vacuum where preconceptions, origin stories, and strong emotions impair action. We need another narrative.
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