Burning Wood for Heat Has Benefits If Done Right

Wood stoves offer a quaint, off-the-grid way to heat your home in the cold winter months. But is burning wood better for the environment?

While the traditional fireplace is an inefficient way to heat a home — the right stove can keep you warm without using a lot wood.

As long as the wood you’re burning is harvested sustainably, there’s no net release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s because newly planted trees will absorb the carbon dioxide released from burning.

Newer stoves are able to get more heat out of each log.

“At the end of the day, it’s just like a well-tuned car. It’s the oxygen-to-fuel ratio. You need enough oxygen to burn the fuel, but if you have too much air coming through, you basically cool the thing down and blow a lot of air out of your house,” says Neil Donahue, a chemical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University.

Donahue adds some stoves are even able to do a double-combustion. That means the stove is able to burn the smoke to get more heat and the less smoke blowing out of the chimney, the better.

“At some point, you get the efficiency pretty high and the big deal is the smoke; the pollution you’re getting out of it,” according to Donahue.

The tiny particles in smoke contribute to haze and poor air quality. Beyond hazy skies, breathing the particles leads to respiratory problems. That’s why stoves that produce only a small amount of smoke are best.

Pellet stoves are perhaps the most efficient way to heat a home. Wood pellets are made from wood scraps. They reduce the amount of wood that needs to be cut down and burn longer than logs.

A clean-burning wood stove can be your local contribution to a better environment.
Photo credit: Southend-on-Sea in Transition/Via Flickr

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