John's Comments

Soot is not a by-product of efficient modern wood heat. Parts of Europe is incentivizing wood heat as much as solar. Soot is a huge problem with traditional wood burning - campfires, and particularly cook stoves in the developing world. According to a recent EPA report, approximately 8% of global black carbon emissions originate in the US and only 3% of black carbon that orginates in the US comes from wood heat appliances. http://www.vnf.com/assets/attachments/1.%20bc-report-draft.pdf. And that 3% mainly comes from ancient wood stoves, not the modern EPA certified ones.

Yes, burning wood releases carbon but most wood burned in American homes comes from wood that is already dead or fallen and its carbon is about to be released anyway. Where I grew up in NH, all my neighbors heated with wood for generations, and wood all came from their own land which is as wooded and healthy as it every was. As long as the resource is sustainably harvested, and burned very cleanly, its a great renewable energy source for rural, low-income families. Modern stoves and boilers get up to 80 - 90% efficiency, triple what an electric utility gets for co-firing wood to make electricity. Their harvesting feeds into more industrial wood operations, a far cry from the low impact harvesting of most rural families.

John Ackerly