Ever heard of wood pellets as an alternative energy source? No? Well I’m not surprised as I hadn’t even heard about them until the other day.
Wood pellet manufacturers have been around since the 1970s when the first experiments were conducted using animal feed pellet mills to process biomass into pellets. Shortly afterwards a few pellet stove makers started production although at the time the market wasn’t taken very seriously.
Back then the price of oil and gas was relatively cheap, climate change was unheard of and global warming was still a myth. So there was no price advantage for the use of incineration wood pellets and the environmental advantages didn’t influence the market towards using the pellets. Those that were in the biomass market at the time such as the biomass log stove owners, weren’t interested either. The pellets cost more than the logs they were using already and as the true benefit of increased efficiency wasn’t known they didn’t see any reason to change.
It was only when oil and gas prices started to rise in the start of the 21st century and climate change became a fact of life that bio energy came into its own. The wood pellet fuels market was starting to engage some serious interest from investors as more green carbon taxes were placed on fossil fuels to encourage low carbon renewable fuel.
Wood pellets are formed from a reserve that is already part of the existing carbon cycle. Incineration wood pellets simply reintroduce the carbon collected during the growth of the tree back into the atmosphere, new trees then absorb this carbon dioxide and the cycle continues.
Today these pellets are made from both softwood and hardwood residues such as pine and spruce. The majority of these residues come from timber processing plants, which are used in housing production. The downside to this is that it leaves the pellet manufactures dependant on the housing market.
In 2008 manufactures reached crisis point when the recession hit and the housing market became one of the worst sectors affected. This meant that with no new houses being built and a reduced demand for timber the waste sawdust used to make wood pellets became more expensive and less readily available.
To stop this crisis from happening again the wood pellet manufactures called for a wider use of different sources for wood pellet fuels. In addition consumers who use the wood pellets for home heating want more fuel flexible pellet stoves to be able to burn the pellets.
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