Keep it Affordable
Keep it Local
We all need to be able to keep a handle on fuel costs and predictability. Having the ability to utilize a resource that literally grows on trees seems to be the most natural thing in the world. Keeping your home, farm, or business warm in a freezing Wisconsin winter using one of our most abundant resources is a wonderful thing.
And the only person that controls your fuel supply and cost is YOU!
Wisconsin has zero fossil fuels and low amounts of sunshine most of the winter. This leads to the question of what we should be using to heat our homes, farms, and businesses. We contend that in many of our state's rural areas this is best done with locally harvested biomass. This can be in the form of logwood (or cordwood if you prefer) manually loaded into a boiler one or two times a day, a pellet boiler that can be loaded every few days (or months), to chip or biomass boilers that need interaction a few times a year.
Any way you decide to do it, biomass and wood are great ways to keep your money circulating in the local economy, rather than sending it off to other lands. Wood is a sustainable resource in our wooded state, and its harvest from managed woodlands can keep forests productive for recreation and wildlife, for generations to come.
Keep it clean
When properly harvested and burned, wood and other biomass has the ability to reduce your carbon footprint more than many other options you have as a homeowner. High efficiency burning of carbon neutral fuels can make a substantial contribution to reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. An average home in Wisconsin contributes 15,000 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere per year for water and space heating. This is equivalent to the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere each year by a single car operating at 28 mpg, driving 20,000 miles/year*. Replacing that fuel use with a wood boiler is roughly equivalent to offsetting the CO2 emissions from a typical car. Believe it or not, that just includes the CO2 from burning the gasoline, not from drilling, refining, and transporting the fuel.
*The above math is based on average home consumption offsetting 900 gallons of propane/year with wood and a car using 680 gallons of gas per year. Reference: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=307&t=11
Keep it safe
Burning biomass in a boiler separate from the house or other buildings can significantly reduce the risk to home occupants from fire and molds/spores/dust/dirt.
Commercial enterprises may find their insurance costs lower if they use automatic biomass burners versus having employees using chainsaws and other dangerous power equipment to prepare wood for a conventional wood boiler.