Over the last few years, homeowners around the world have switched from traditional home warming options to either more traditional solutions or very modern ones.
As energy costs rise and more people become familiar with environmental issues, wood-burning stoves have made a surprising comeback in many homes.
Visually pleasing, these sustainable heating options add rustic charm to any property and are also able to operate off the grid, gaining them a reputation as a natural form of heating. Of course, there are some critics who state that using wood-burning stoves can create secondary issues with air quality and even carbon emissions, which begs the question of whether they are truly sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives.
So, if you’re considering opting for a wood-burning stove in your home, read on, as here, the ins and outs of this heating option will be explored in more depth.
Renewable Fuel?
With regards to sustainable heating: are wood burners environmentally friendly?. The answer is that the wood’s cycle has to be considered.
As the fans of wood burners like to point out, as trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide. When the same wood is burned in a fire, the carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere, completing an actual carbon cycle. This stands in contrast to other heating options that are used, such as coal, oil, and gas, which release the carbon that has been locked underground.
However, it’s a bit more complex than this. It’s true that trees can and do reabsorb carbon, but this process takes decades, creating what researchers have called a carbon lag. Burning the wood releases the carbon immediately, but the new growth of the trees can take years to offset this emission. So, it has been put forward that wood as a form of heating can only really be considered carbon-neutral when the wood that’s used comes from sustainably managed forests.
If you’re considering a wood-burning stove to heat your home, this can be worrying, but there are other reasons why this option may be a greener solution than alternative heating.
Wood Is Renewable
As mentioned earlier, even if it takes years for the wood to grow back from being harvested for heating, it does grow back, making it one of the few truly renewable energy options.
Fossil fuels can’t be replenished, but when trees are harvested in a sustainable way, this helps to offset the carbon lag mentioned earlier, keeping CO2 out of the air and helping to benefit the planet.
Carbon Neutral Potential
Following on from this, some fans of wood-burning stoves as a heating option will point out that by using locally sourced wood from well-managed forests, those who opt for this are helping to keep wood carbon neutral. This is assuming that the wood is burned efficiently in modern stoves and also assumes that no accelerants are used.
Low-Carbon Supply Chains
Most people are aware of how practices involving digging for fossil fuels create secondary environmental issues, such as excess use of power and fuels to transport harvested fossil fuels from point A to point B. If you’re aiming to use a wood-burning stove to heat your home or a wood burner, provided that you use locally sourced options, you can bypass the need for transportation across long distances and offset those secondary environmental issues. As well as this, if you’re buying wood for your wood burners from a local small business, you’re also helping local businesses, which is great for the economy!
Efficient Stove Technology
The efficiency of the wood burner has to be taken into consideration when choosing this heating option. Aim to get DEFRA-approved heaters if you can, as these burn all wood-based fuels completely and produce fewer particles and emissions, especially when compared to older heaters or even open fires.
Use of Waste and By-Products
Of course, there’s nothing to say that you have to buy the wood for your wood burner from a business that directly offers this resource. Wood burners can be used to burn all manner of second-hand wood cuts, such as waste wood, sawmill residue, or even the by-products of forest thinning practices. This helps to make better use of renewable biomass without adding to deforestation.
Remember, the key here is to ensure that when you get wood for your wood burner, it’s sourced from forests that replant trees to help prevent carbon lag and that you have an efficient wood-burning option for your home. This way, you can have a visually appealing addition to your home without needing to worry about the planet.
