Glowing Future for Forest Power

New England gets fired up over an ancient fuel

The surging price of heating oil is bad news for most homeowners, but not for Walt Schneider of Cannondale, Conn. Schneider's business is selling wood-burning stoves and fireplace accessories. Every time OPEC tacks yet another increase onto the price of a barrel of imported oil, fresh waves of Schneider's neighbors come streaming into his shop in search of a solution to their overheated bills.

In the past five years the long dormant wood-stove industry has been fanned back to life by the energy crisis, and nowhere is demand stronger than in New England, where good old-fashioned Yankee self-reliance and vast stands of hardwood forests stretching from the Canadian border to the New York City suburbs are combining to help free the region from its 80% dependence on foreign oil. Since 1970, the use of wood for energy in New England has grown sixfold, and in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire a full 18% of all households now rely on the fuel as their primary heating source. People are simply finding that they can save money by putting a wood stove or furnace in their homes, and then going out to the backyard and cutting down their own fuel.

Stoves and furnaces are a much more economical and efficient means of burning wood than is the venerable glowing fireplace. A cheery hearth may be aesthetically appealing but it also wastes more energy than it saves. When wood is burned in an open fireplace, 50% of its energy goes up the chimney. Worse, chimney drafts suck even more heat out of the house itself. Wood stoves, generally priced at $400 to $600, eliminate the waste by putting the fire in an airtight metal chamber that regulates the oxygen flow by means of an adjustable vent. This produces a hotter, slower-burning blaze than in a fireplace. More important, the stove throws its heat into the room instead of up the chimney.

With demand for stoves growing, companies are turning out fresh designs that are not only more efficient than the traditional Franklin stove but also a good deal more pleasing to look at. Until recently, imported stoves such as the cigar-shaped Le Petit Godin from France or the futuristic-looking wood burners of Scandinavia have been the industry's pacesetters. Now the slumping dollar is driving up import prices, and people find that they can often get better value with a domestic product like the Vermont-made Downdrafter or the Connecticut-made All Nighter.

As interest in conservation grows, stoves and furnaces are also becoming more technologically sophisticated. Several coal-and oil-burner manufacturers offer central-heating systems that can operate on either wood or fossil fuels, or both at the same time. New York's Oneida Heater Co., one of the nation's oldest furnace makers, introduced a wood-fired line of furnaces five years ago and now does some 80% of its business with them. In Milwaukee, a gocart manufacturer, Johnson Kart Co., five years ago developed a wood-burner adapter to fit onto existing oil-fired hot-air furnaces, and since then has tripled its work force and sold 50,000 of the units (price: $269).

Stoves and furnaces are selling well in New England because so much wood is available near by. Many regions of the U.S. are heavily timbered, but New England is unique: more than three-fourths of its forest land is owned by individuals, often in plots of less than ten acres. That has made it difficult for lumber and paper companies to come in and negotiate logging contracts, and much of the wilderness has become overgrown with low-grade timber of little commercial value. The New England Regional Commission, an economic development group, puts the total energy content of the area's forests at the equivalent of some 3 billion bbl. of oil, roughly the proven reserves of the Middle East sultanate of Oman. Unlike oil, the forest is a renewable resource and could provide a significant fraction of New England's energy needs indefinitely.

So far, Washington's attitude toward forest power seems somewhat muddled. The Department of Energy is spending $42 million on wood-energy projects of all sorts, but the tax provisions of the Carter energy program do not give homeowners credits for the purchase of wood stoves, even though such credits are granted to families that save energy by adding insulation, solar panels and even windmills to their homes. One idea getting some attention from DOE officials is a feasibility study by a subsidiary of New Hampshire's Wheelabrator-Frye Inc. to build a wood-fueled electricity-and steam-generating plant in New England that would produce 30 megawatts, or enough to supply all the electricity and heating for a community of 30,000. Cost: $50 million to $55 million.

More than 150 New England industrial firms have already gone over to wood power. The Burlington, Vt., municipal electric department is one of the converts. The changeover, which involved refitting one of the plant's three coal-fired boilers, was made 18 months ago at a cost of only $25,000. The expense was negligible because most of the work was handled by the plant's engineers in their spare time. Explains General Manager Robert Young: "I have friends at IBM who say that for $25,000 they'd probably still be hiring consultants. Well, we got the job done because we went out and did it ourselves, and without a lot of analyzing."

So successful is the Burlington project that the city's 45,000 residents have approved a $40 million bond issue to build a 50-megawatt wood-fired generator to supply most of the area's electricity needs beginning in 1983. Says Alan Turner, head of Vermont's wood-energy program: "There are lots of questions about nuclear power in people's minds. Moreover, New England is at the end of the line for coal transportation and completely at the mercy of foreign oil price fluctuations. Wood, however, is right here, and the technology is proven. So why shouldn't we switch?" Why not indeed?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.