Wood burners as the heating technology of the future? You’re kidding right? Well, actually no. Throw together some history and an analysis of current affairs and this argument starts to look rather more compelling than it might initially appear.

The first design of the wood stove dates back to the mid 18th Century and a certain Benjamin Franklin, who lived in the new and rapidly growing city of Philadelphia. The pace of development was such that there was soon a serious shortfall in firewood supplies which prompted him to invent a device he named the circulating stove.

This early type of wood burner was simple, but nevertheless produced a lot more heat from considerably less wood and so reduced demand on the limited supply of firewood. A few refinements later and a sealed design that was easily ten times more efficient than an open fire became the de facto standard for the next couple of centuries.

By the time the 1970s rolled around, a familiar story resurfaced; the oil crises of that time period restricted the supply of oil which in turn impacted the many people who by this time relied on gas and oil to run their heating systems. Many quite sensibly started to reconsider wood burners given the easily accessible and thus more affordable supply of fuel.

However, things didn’t pan out so simply. For a start there were now considerably more strict controls on pollution and energy efficiency, so manufacturers set to redesigning key elements and using modern materials. Pretty soon the modern wood burner had heat retaining linings, catalytic converters, automated fuel feed and control systems, and had parked its tanks squarely on the conventional gas boiler’s lawn.

This modernised, efficient and clean burning form of wood burner quietly settled into late 20th Century life, but as the new millennium dawned it became ever more obvious that all was not well with our fossil fuel society. The oil was already half gone and we also confronted a legacy of CO2 pollution. And some people had already spotted that burning wood was more than just a cost effective alternative to burning oil.

People have hitherto been drawn to burning wood because of the relatively low cost, but there’s more to the story than that. Wood is not only a renewable resource, since you always grow more trees, but it is in effect carbon neutral. Growing a new tree for firewood utilizes two plentiful and cost-free ingredients: sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is turned into carbon (wood) in the shape of the new tree and oxygen as a sort of waste product.

All that is necessary to clean up the CO2 released by burning the wood from a tree is to grow yet another tree. It really is as straightforward as that and for that reason, although it will probably never become a dominant heating technology, woodburning is most likely to be with us for quite some time yet. Think of it as a sort of solar energy that helps clean CO2 from the air while the fuel grows.

For much more information on this subject, check out these additional articles about the wood stove heating and wood burner stoves.