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The Word on the
H E AT
With every new installation it helps guide to success, the Northern Forest Center is demonstrating that automated wood heat is a stable, affordable option that benefits both the environment and the local economy. BY PATRICK C. MILLER
T
he saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees aptly describes the challenge of encouraging more people to use automated, high-efficiency wood heating technology in the forested areas of the northeastern U.S. Surrounded by forests containing a vast source of renewable fuel with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, boost local economies and help maintain healthy forests, most homeowners instead rely on fuel oil—much of it imported—to meet their heating needs. Studies have shown that wood fuel could provide up to 30 percent of heating needs in some areas of the Northeast. However, wood currently meets just 1 percent of the region’s home, commercial and institutional heating needs. “Our single biggest barrier to increased sales and increased market pen-
etration for wood pellet heating is that people just don’t understand that it’s an option,” says Andy Boutin, who founded Pellergy LLC in 2005, out of a desire to use wood rather than oil to heat his home. Located in Montpellier, Vermont, Pellergy sells residential, commercial and industrial wood pellet boilers and wood pellet storage and transportation systems. The problem, as Boutin explains it, has to do with how home heating systems are sold, and how homeowners perceive home heating in general. Although a heating system represents one of the largest purchases a homeowner will ever make, and can be in operation for seven or eight months of a year, most people are unaware that automated wood heat is an option. “Given that level of purchase, the understanding of what your options are and what is available is incredibly lacking,” Boutin says. “Most of the purchase deci-
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sions are made by the plumbing and heating contractor that’s servicing your equipment, or someone you’ve called because your equipment isn’t working. “It’s a very interesting and complex buying issue,” Boutin continues. “You need to market to the homeowner from a demand perspective. From a supply perspective, you also need to have these plumbing and heating contractors know that this is a viable and reliable option as well. That word is just not out there.”
Northern Forest Center
Fortunately, one of the primary goals of the Northern Forest Center—which operates in the states of New York, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont—is to educate and assist homeowners, businesses and institutions on the advantages of automated wood heat. Pellergy is one of many businesses that works with
the center to promote automated wood heating. “People are accustomed to cord wood and some pellet stoves, but heating with automated, high-efficiency wood pellet boilers is really uncommon, and that’s what we’re trying to change,” says Maura Adams, NFC program director. “It’s a really fantastic option for people who are concerned about their local economy and who want to do something environmentally responsible.” The NFC was founded 20 years ago in response to conditions in the northern forest states where patterns of land ownership were changing dramatically. Rather than large industrial paper companies owning big tracts of forested land, it was being broken up into smaller private holdings. “With that came a lot of questions about future land use and what that economy was going to look like,” Adams notes. “We’ve