Wood pellets and the environment

Carbon Footprint

Wood pellets have a very small carbon footprint: less than one-tenth of the footprint of fossil fuels and electric heating (including heat-pumps). Wood itself is carbon-neutral – absorbing as much carbon when it is growing as is released when it is burnt. The main fossil-carbon releases associated with wood pellets are due to the fossil fuels used to produce and transport them. But unless the factory uses a very inefficient fossil-fired process, and the pellets are transported a very long distance by road, the fossil-carbon embodied in wood pellets is a small fraction of the fossil-carbon released by most other ways of producing heat.

Sustainability

The two main sources of wood for pellets in the UK are sustainably-managed softwood forests and waste wood (virgin-fibre by-products from the forestry and timber-production industries, or untreated wood recovered from demolition waste streams). Rainforests are not harmed by the production of wood pellets.

Forever Fuels only supplies pellets made from wood from sustainably-managed forests or from virgin-fibre by-products. Other than the odd small producer using by-products, for whom accreditation is not practical, our producers are FSC or equivalent accredited.

Emissions and air quality

Wood-pellet boilers can achieve very low emissions. Because of their consistent characteristics, wood pellets burn cleaner and more consistently than other wood fuels. The emissions depend significantly on the quality of the equipment and the installation, as well as the fuel. The quality of some equipment and installers in the UK is now so good that their systems can even be used in Clean Air Zones.

Resource

There is a substantial resource of wood that can be used for our energy needs, even allowing for the continued use of wood for other purposes (like paper, timber and board), the protection of large areas of forest for the environmental services that they provide, and assuming that wood is only extracted at a sustainable rate from the unprotected areas.

Nevertheless, it can only meet a fraction of our needs, and we ought to use it as efficiently as possible. We get much more from the wood resource if we use it for producing heat or Combined Heat & Power (at around 85% efficiency), than if we use it mainly to produce electricity (at around15-30% efficiency). Wood is one of the few forms of renewable energy that can easily be stored for more than a few days. Burning it continuously through the year to produce inefficient electricity is a dreadful waste of this potential. Wood is a good match to our seasonal heating needs, which is why it has been used for this purpose for millennia. It can do the most good for the long-term sustainability of our energy supplies if it continues to be used for this purpose.