Bill Bell of Maine Pellet Fuels Association
By guest columnist Bill Bell
Pellet heat, which costs the equivalent of #2 heating oil at $2.00 per gallon, is Maine’s logical answer to volatile oil prices. While wood pellet prices will always fluctuate somewhat, they will be far more stable—and generally much lower—than oil. In fact, one of Maine’s major pellet heating firms now guarantees—for customers within 100 miles of its facility—a delivered price of $239/ton, which is the equivalent of heating oil at $1.99/ gallon, for the next three years! Maine homeowners, businesses, taxpayers and public officials need only to keep two salient facts in mind: We are the most forested state in the nation, and also the state most heavily dependent on oil for heating our homes.
Our allies in this conversion, interestingly, will be Maine’s oil dealers. Our local oil dealers are trusted by Maine homeowners—they have been keeping us warm for decades. They are also versatile; many of them are third-generation family firms which started off delivering coal and ice. The former Maine Oil Dealers Association has changed its name to Maine Energy Marketers Association, and one of their directors is also a director of the Maine Pellet Fuels Association. In the European nations that have switched to wood pellet heating, particularly Austria (which is similar to Maine in size, population and forest cover), pellets are delivered to homes and stored in bins similar to oil tanks; this is the future of home heating in Maine as well. Your “oil dealer” will be your “fuel dealer.”
The current barrier to widespread conversion is the installation cost of a pellet-fueled central heating system, which is about double that of an oil system. The heating cost calculator linked to the mepfa.org website shows that the conversion pays for itself in four years, after which huge savings kick in. Resourceful Maine citizens, businesses and public officials (particularly school administrators) are finding ways to finance these conversions, and are on their way to heat which is less expensive, locally produced (from sustainably managed forests), virtually carbon neutral, and generating lots of jobs in Maine. And unlike many other forms of renewable energy, pellet heating is here, today.
Bill Bell is the executive director of the Maine Pellet Fuels Association. More info at www.mepfa.org.
