Wood & Pellet Stove Facts & Myths

Top 5 Facts & Myths about Wood & Pellet Stoves:

  1. All new wood stoves must be certified by the EPA or else they are illegal.
  2. Per the EPA, wood stoves emit less than half the particulate per hour than your gasoline car.
  3. Wood & Pellet stoves qualify for the same federal tax credits as heat pumps per Section 25(c) of the IRS code.
  4. 89% of Maine is forested and 33% of the USA is forested.
  5. Wood and pellet are renewable, domestic resources.
  6. Even at $350 a cord for seasoned wood, burning wood is about 40% cheaper than a heat pump. And, unlike a heat pump, it works without power and it does not matter how cold outside it is.
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Top 5 Facts & Myths about Wood & Pellet Stoves:

  1. All new wood stoves must be certified by the EPA or else they are illegal.  People say, “I want to buy one of those EPA-certified wood stoves.”  Well, in order to legally sell a wood stove in the USA, it must be certified by the EPA. In fact, any stove since about the mid-1980s has been EPA-certified.  They just had different emissions requirements. At one point it it was 7.5 grams per hour. Then, 4.5. In 2020 it was 2.5.  And, since about 2023, it has been 2.0 grams per hour.
  2. Per the EPA, wood stoves emit less than half the particulate per hour than your gasoline car. That’s right.  Today and per the EPA, wood stoves must emit fewer than 2 grams per hour whereas according to Google generative AI at time of writing, cars with catalytic combusters emit on average 4 grams of particulate per hour.  And, when you use A/C in your car, 25% more than that, so 5 grams per hour on average in the summer – more than twice as much particulate than EPA wood stoves!  How can that be?  It’s called “the wood and pellet stove industry is small, and the car industry is big.”   As a frame of reference, again according to Good Ol’ Google, there are about 12 million wood stoves in the USA. Were there are over 346 million people in the USA, just one in 28 people have a wood stove.  But, according to Google, as of 2023 – over 265 million gasoline powered cars in the USA!  And that’s just gas.  There are another 10 million diesel cars, and

 

  1. Wood & Pellet stoves qualify for the same federal tax credits as heat pumps per Section 25(c) of the IRS code.
  2. 89% of Maine is forested and 33% of the USA is forested.
  3. Wood and pellet are renewable, domestic resources.
  4. Even at $350 a cord for seasoned wood, burning wood is about 40% cheaper than a heat pump. And, unlike a heat pump, it works without power and it does not matter how cold outside it is.