The Street Discovers Wood Heat
You know things are bad when Wall Street starts lauding the benefits of wood heat as cheap and effective. But that’s exactly what Zach Anchors of TheStreet.com reported a couple of days ago in his article Wood Heat Can Cut Fuel Bill in Half. The claims of savings Anchors makes are a bit ambitious. They’re also at odds with Big Brother® government, who a year ago held pro forma hearings to ban the use of wood stoves in the nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Enforcement started the first of November, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, who panned the unwanted regulatory change in the title of an article published today (November 20): Fireplace police on patrol; smoke can draw fine.
I, among many others, pointed out the silliness of this regulation when it was first proposed. Granted, there are 1.4 million wood burning appliances in the greater Bay Area. But if those 1.4 million homes aren’t burning wood, which is carbon neutral, then they’re going to be burning natural gas or propane or heating oil, which is not carbon neutral.
Had the Air Quality Control Board really been interested in air quality and the health of Bay Area residents, rather than job security, they would have mandated the use of high efficiency wood stoves, rather than just imposing a blanket ban. High efficiency wood stoves produce no more particulate matter than the average oil fired furnace — and the emissions are less complex. For every high efficiency wood stove heating a home in the Bay Area that’s one less fossil fuel driven furnace polluting the environment. For every home using a high efficiency wood stove in the Bay Area that’s one more home in America that has significantly reduced its carbon foot print.
For a supposedly progressive State, California can sometimes be very backwards.
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