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Wood
Pellet Heating - Introduction
Wood is a renewable source of energy because the
carbon dioxide emitted when the wood is burned has been taken
out of the atmosphere by the growing plant. Even allowing for
emissions of fossil carbon dioxide in planting, harvesting,
processing and transporting the fuel, replacing fossil fuel
with wood fuel will typically reduce net CO2 emissions by over
90%.
This applies to all forms
of wood fuel, including wood pellets, which are usually made of
highly compressed waste sawdust. The use of wood pellets for heating
is well established in countries such as North America, Sweden,
Austria and Denmark. Work on the development of a UK market started
in 1999 with the assistance of an EU funded project 'Introducing
Wood Pellet Fuel to the UK'. The project helped to establish a number
of sources of UK manufactured wood pellets and saw the installation
of the first wood pellet-fired appliances.
There is now an emerging
pellet industry in the UK with pockets of activity in a number of
regions. Pellets are now produced and supplied by a number of companies
in the UK. The National Energy Foundation maintains a list
of these.
From January 2007 to December 2009 the National Energy Foundation were a partner in the EC-funded project Pellets@las. The aim of the project is to collect prices and volumes
of pellets produced or traded across Europe. The results
were put on the project website.
Brands of Swedish, Danish
and Austrian pellet fired boilers and several makes of pellet stove
from Europe and North America are now available in the UK. There
are currently two UK manufacturers of wood pellet boilers based
in Leicestershire and Staffordshire.
Being a source of renewable
energy, wood pellets are exempt from the Climate Change Levy.