From April 6-8, scores of state, federal, academic and industry representatives will gather at the U.S. DOE’s Brookhaven National Lab for the Pellet Stove Design Challenge. This competition seeks to identify and spread affordable strategies for making pellet stoves cleaner and more efficient. But, the competition also serves as a high-level gathering of experts to talk about the future of pellet stoves.

The future of residential pellet heating is in flux, not only because of rock bottom oil and gas prices, but also because more affordable heat pumps and other technologies are entering the market. However, we think the residential pellet stove market can withstand this downturn and come out even stronger.  Here’s why:

First, an increasing number of incentives and change out programs are giving larger rebates for pellet stoves than for wood stoves.  This trend will create baseline sales to stabilize the industry.  It’s becoming common knowledge that a pellet stove tested at 2.5 grams per hour will burn far cleaner during its lifetime than a wood stove tested at 2.5 grams per hour.

Second, pellet stoves are often used to heat just the core of a house. They offer homeowners substantial savings over an oil or propane boiler designed to heat the whole house. 

Third, the price point of many pellet stoves is within reach of millions of Americans.  One of the bestselling pellet stoves is a Virginia-made Englander stove that costs $1,200 and is occasionally marked down to under $1,000.  It’s below average in efficiency, but for the price, it would take a decade for a higher-efficiency, $4,000 stove to achieve the same savings.

Fourth, more families are buying pellet stoves not based solely on cost savings, but because of the growing trend toward renewable technology and the notion that supporting multinational oil and gas companies is not beneficial for the planet, and it simply feels good to cut the cord with them. Heat local. Eat local. Keep the profits and jobs local.

These four factors will help the pellet stove industry weather low gas and oil prices, but stronger and long-term growth of the residential pellet stove industry will take more deliberate action on the part of the industry.  It will require stove manufacturers and their trade associations to be more assertive, transparent and consumer friendly. 

The industry has already taken the crucial step of establishing a pellet certification program that helps consumers identify consistently good quality pellets, and increasingly more pellet producers are signing up.

Many stove manufacturers still have a long way to go in improving the efficiency of their technologies. The legacy of pellet stoves being exempted from U.S. EPA standards through high air-to-fuel ratios left a stain on the industry. Moreover, the average pellet stove today has an efficiency of about 70 percent, and some are still in the 50 percent range. We need to see more stoves with efficiencies in the high 70s to build a renewable energy sector that can hold its own with heat pumps, solar thermal and geothermal.

The biggest environmental advantage of pellet stoves is that they can be consistently far cleaner than wood stoves in the hands of consumers.  Each gram of particulate matter in a neighborhood’s air is important, and pellet stove manufacturers should start meeting the 2020 EPA standard of 2 grams per hour as soon as possible. Regulators should start devising incentives to be under 1 gram per hour.

All stove manufacturers should play by the same rules, disclosing actual efficiency and Btu output numbers to consumers. Some companies still grossly exaggerate efficiency and Btu output data, which may result in consumers purchasing a substandard product on the basis of false promises. And companies could be legally liable for misleading consumers through false promises, as has happened with some automobile and other appliances manufacturers.

Stove quality and durability are paramount. Too many consumers have had stoves break down and experienced trouble getting professional and affordable repairs.  Some brands like Harman have excellent reputations for durability, but the tradeoff is higher cost. Buying a brand that has an experienced dealer and service capacity nearby is very important for pellet stoves because they need repairs and professional annual cleanings, somewhat like cars.  However, unlike cars, many pellet stove brands don’t have the service network to support these maintenance needs, and this can result in a loss of consumer confidence.

All of these issues will be on the table at the Pellet Stove Design Challenge to be held at Brookhaven National Lab in April. We hope state and federal regulators attending will walk away with increased confidence in this sector and recognize the potential of pellet stoves to affordably reduce fossil fuels in millions of U.S. households.  The solar juggernaut is building steam every year, and technologies like pellet stoves and boilers that have huge promise could get pushed to the sidelines. It’s up to us to ensure that doesn’t happen. When oil and gas prices rise again, pellet stoves have potential to become a more mainstream technology in the U.S., just as they are in Europe.


Author: John Ackerly
President, Alliance for Green Heat
jackerly@forgreenheat.org
301-204-9562