Wood Pellet Stoves for Pollution and Greenhouse Gas Reduction

Domestic space heating in many cold regions of Australia is usually supplied by heaters running on solid wood, gas or electricity. All three fuel sources usually emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. Firewood collection for wood heaters has serious impacts on biodiversity. Wood heaters emit smoke and other gases which cause serious health problems. This research looked at pellet heaters as an alternative home heating option, to see if they could reduce wood smoke pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity impacts, using the Northern Tablelands of NSW as a case study. The research looked at existing literature and conducted social surveys to find that pellet heaters are a suitable home heating option with lower emissions and lower impacts on biodiversity than other options. Pellet heaters will be slightly more expensive to purchase and operate, so options for providing incentives for their uptake were examined. There are public benefits from pellet heaters (public health, biodiversity and climate), and so there may be a case for policy intervention to encourage their uptake. Pellet supply was identified as a disincentive to the uptake of the heaters. The research found that there are suitable local sources of waste wood or silvicultural by-products to support pellet manufacture in the region. An efficient pellet plant would need to produce in the vicinity of 50,000 tonnes per year to be viable. Such a plant would over-supply the Northern Tablelands under the most optimistic scenario, so a market would need to be created for pellets outside the region.