Red-hot firewood price fueled by energy crisis
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Stove vendors are reporting huge jumps in sales, while firewood itself is selling at up to 33% more than last year.
Around 8% of American households are expected to rely on this “rudimentary” fuel as a main or secondary heating source through winter.
I know that when it comes to the environment and emissions there are many who will now state how bad this situation is but the truth is that the only emissions, as far as CO2 is concerned, is the carbon that the tree sequestered throughout its life. No more. So, theoretically, burning wood is carbon neutral. Alas, depending on how dry the wood is, there are nano-particles in the smoke to be considered, I know.
On the other hand when we see this increase in firewood sales, in the US and probably elsewhere, we have to ask where the wood is coming from and how sustainably it has been grown, harvested and whether it comes from a sustainable operation in that the woods are maintained in a rotation.
We saw in Britain some years back that the firewood being sold came from almost untraceable operations abroad in the main, and from as far afield as Belarus. Very little was actually homegrown and harvested. Sustainable this definitely was not but imports were cheaper, as far as the sellers were concerned, than homegrown. No wonder our woods and our woodland workers and owners cannot make any money in that field.
Importing firewood logs from abroad is not sustainable, neither in the short nor the long run, but then again, as far as the UK is concerned, it makes the laws for homegrown wood fuel more and more difficult, all in attempt to make it impossible for people to heat their homes from sources outside the control of the big corporations and the state. In fact, the UK is not far off banning all wood-burning stoves altogether. They keep talking about net zero but wood fuel is – basically – net zero.
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