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Fuel-wood is readily available, easy to use, and provides efficient heat when burned properly, particularly in a wood-burning stove. Wind and water are also available as energy sources, although they may be expensive. As late as the mid-1800s, wood provided about 90 percent of all the fuel energy consumed in the United States. But by the early 1900s, the serious exploitation of coal had brought this figure down to about 45 percent; and by 1970, the equally serious exploitation of oil and natural gas had reduced it even further, to about 1.5 percent. (However, wood accounted for about 8 percent of Sweden’s fuel and 15 percent of Finland’s during the same year.) In 1973, fewer than 1 percent of the homes in New England—a heavily-forested area with a long tradition of wood burning— used wood as the principal heating fuel. However, since the Arab oil embargo in 1973, energy consciousness has risen along with the price of fossil fuels. Today, about a fifth of all New England houses are heated primarily with wood, and about half of all houses in this area use wood at least for auxiliary heating. Even though it isn’t cheap to buy a good wood-burning stove or to turn a decorative fireplace into an efficient heat-producer, wood is again becoming a popular way to heat your house. Wood decreases your dependence on other forms of energy, and at the same time it lets you carry on one of America’s more self-reliant and romantic traditions. Until recently, the act of burning wood to produce heat incited anxiety and controversy among environmentalists and conservationists. The great fear was that it would not only pollute the air but, worse, utterly destroy a vital natural resource. However, the science of forestry management, combined with technological advances in the mechanics of burning wood, has shown that if the fuel wood available in the United States is properly managed, harvested, cut, seasoned, and burned, it can pro vide about 35 million homes with 100 percent of their heating fuel annually. That’s more than half the residential heating requirement of the entire nation. (Fuel-wood is distinct from lumber, pa per and product wood, and the wood that must rot in the ground to maintain the soil’s nutrient balance.) Further, these figures don’t take into account such factors as roadside, back yard, and other randomly available trees; orchards; branches and dead wood from harvested trees; or the trees standing on about 250 million acres of marginal forest and parkland. Pollution issues from the inefficient use of wood as a fuel. The combustion that we call “burning” is essentially a speeded-up version of the oxidation that takes place naturally when a tree dies and decays. Decaying trees give off certain chemicals that might be harmful, but these are mitigated by the soil and surrounding flora. When wood is burned incompletely, these chemicals— essentially the same ones that forests have given off for eons —become part of the smoke that escapes up your chimney. The long-term effects of the chemicals aren’t known, but they are presumed to be small. However, when wood is burned completely, the pollution issue goes up in smoke: most of what is given off is water vapor, carbon dioxide, and heat. The efficient burning of wood creates the least pollution, as well as the most possible heat. You may not be destined to manage or harvest large forests, but unless you live in the desert (and even then, there’s mesquite!), the next few years will probably offer you the chance to cut, sea son, or at least burn wood. This section will tell you what you need to know about wood, and about the increasingly popular wood-burning stoves so that if you choose to use it as either a primary or an auxiliary fuel, you can do so in the most efficient and pleasurable way possible. Next: Wood as Fuel Prev: Solar Energy |