Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
Many still supplement with wood, which always seems to fly under the radar when we’re talking about carbon emissions…
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The carbon footprint of wood, like all other biofuels, varies massively depending on how exactly it's sourced, processed, transported, and used. Burning with wood can be anywhere from actually having net negative emissions in the best case to being just as bad as coal in the worst case.
When firewood is harvested with sustainable forest practices it actually increases the sequestration value of the forests which leads to net negative emissions. The carbon footprint of firewood in this case comes from the processing of it - sawing, bucking, and splitting the lumber into burnable pieces - and the transportation to consumers.
All of the machinery used for processing firewood - chainsaws and woodsplitters and such - all come in battery electric variants now. And transportation of course is being decarbonized. So wood absolutely can be a climate friendly heating fuel. Here in Ontario most of the people who burn with wood are rural residents sourcing it from their own properties by harvesting trees that naturally die in windstorms and such, so the transportation aspect is minimal anyway.
However - and this is a huge "however" - there is a limit to the amount of wood that can sustainably be harvested so wood can only ever really be an "edge cases" solution for rural/remote communities. As well, there are a lot of negative air quality impacts from burning wood, so if a lot of buildings close together are all being heated by wood, the affect on local air quality can be horrendous. In rural areas it's fine but if wood heating is widespread in urban or suburban areas it can be a big problem.