Environmental Benefits
Responsibly reduce your carbon footprint.
Wood pellet fuel for central heating has a number of substantial advantages over the burning of fossil fuels. One advantage is its environmental friendliness.
Wood pellets are deemed a carbon neutral fuel from the point of combustion by both the US Department of Energy and the US Environmental Protection Agency, meaning that a switch to wood pellets immediately and drastically reduces a home’s heating carbon footprint.
Wood pellets are made predominantly from pure wood from sawmill residues, wood waste, low grade products from other forest industries, and urban waste wood. It is a responsible and efficient way to use the resources we are surrounded with, while decarbonizing and stretching heating dollars at the same time. The heat of compression as the fine woody material is forced through a die heats the natural lignin in the wood binding the material into a durable pellet.
Virtually all of the wood pellets produced in the Maine market are made from wood which is certified as sustainably harvested by a third-party agency.
Taking wood that would have otherwise been wasted by being burned as sawdust or buried in a landfill and instead using it for heating pellets is just responsible – wood that burns or decays naturally releases exactly the same amount of CO2 as a much higher efficiency pellet does. Further, this CO2 is already within our atmosphere, guided through the cycle of photosynthesis and carbon sequestration in our forests, so it’s not new CO2 introduced into the atmosphere as is seen with fossil fuels.
With responsible forest management ensuring that as many or more healthy trees are growing than are harvested annually, wood baskets can become major carbon sinks.
Since wood pellets are consumed closer to their production site than fossil fuels less greenhouse gas is generated in their transportation.
Schools are an investment in our children.
Upgrading your school’s heating system with wood pellet heat is environmentally friendly and can reduce your carbon footprint while using a locally sourced renewable fuel.