The Log Pile Website > Wood Pellets > Introduction

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.  If you would like to be added to this list or become aware that it is inaccurate in anyway then please contact us.   A number of European and North American manufacturers are also willing to export pellets in bulk to the UK.

In January 2007, a new EC-funded project started called Pellets@las, to aid the European pellet market with information from the whole of Europe.  The aim of the project is to collect prices and volumes of pellets produced or traded across Europe.  The data will be summarised into average values and priced indices for each European country.  The National Energy Foundation are pleased to be a partner in this project and are responsible for collecting quarterly data for the UK and Ireland from October 2007.  The results we be 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.

Log Pile is a project from the National Energy Foundation which was supported by DEFRA.