@cjd
What's the advantage gained by converting it into pellets, rather than burning it as logs?
@cjd @TMakarios There's a lot of good things about wood, but there are downsides. I'm not sure if there's enough to go around and emissions from it are pretty bad. Air quality sucks in an area where everyone is burning wood. Furnace designs can help with this somewhat. I've always wondered if we could grow enough dried algae pellets in the ocean and run them through modified coal plants.
@cjd @TMakarios They have come along way. The sulfur compounds are the worst, carbon emissions to me are basically net zero. Still, you see so much acreage burn every year in wildfires and I always think about how many homes that could have heated and burned more efficiently.
@daniel
It sounds like a lot of this is quite location-dependent. Here near the middle of New Zealand, my wife and I seldom want overnight heating (the house keeps its heat well enough), and we'd want it even less if we double-glazed. It's windy here, too, so air quality isn't much of an issue, though I think there are regulations on the efficiency of newly installed wood burners.
@cjd
@daniel
A load of energy gets used for space heating. The annoying thing is, in many areas, it can be drastically reduced or avoided by better building design (see eg. Passive House).
Sadly legislation for 'zero carbon' homes, here in the UK, was scrapped 5 years ago just as the ten year introduction period was coming to an end and they would be enacted 🙄
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/uk-scraps-zero-carbon-home-target
Wood has a bad reputation for emissions dry fuel and efficient stoves help a lot @cjd @TMakarios
@dazinism @cjd @TMakarios That does stink. The concept becoming mainstream has done some good though because people know they can get by with a lot less energy usage. People used to chop wood like madmen to make it through winter and I always thought they might be better off if they used it for insulation rather than burning it.
@daniel @TMakarios
I seem to recall pellet stoves, in particular, being pretty clean. I think in the US they're allowed to be vented like dryers, without a chimney, so they must be quite low in CO emissions anyway.