why choose pellets?
Did you know that heating accounts for about half of U.S. residential energy consumption? Heating your home with electricity, oil or gas can be really expensive...
Start saving money now with a cost-efficient and eco-friendly pellet heating stove!
Natural gas heats 50 percent of U.S. homes, whereas about a third of the country heats homes with electricity. 5 billion gallons of oil and 15 billion gallons of propane are used every year to heat 20% of American homes. If all oil customers switched to biomass, the savings could amount to 120 million barrels! That is, 1.68% of the 7.14 billion total barrels of oil consumed per year.
Pellet fuel is the most cost-effective, renewable alternative to fossil fuels for heating your home. Here are some facts about pellets published by the Pellets Fuels Institute:
- Typically, a homeowner would use around 3 tons of pellets per heating season at an average price of $825. Considering that the normal retail price is $250/ton, pellets offer a fuel cost per million BTU of $19.05. In contrast, to offer the same fuel cost per million BTU, # 2 fuel oil and propane would have to be priced at $2.05/gal and $1.36/gal, respectively! (Fuel Value Calculator, USFS, 2008)
- Energy-efficiency wise, one ton of wood pellets is equivalent to 2.8 barrels of #2 fuel oil. (Energy Information Administration)
- Pellet stoves produce extremely low particulate emissions thanks to their high burn efficiency and fuel density (<1 gm/hr). (Environmental Protection Agency)
- Every ton of pellets used instead of oil reduces CO2 emissions by about 1.5 tons.
- Pellet distribution is cheaper than the cost of distributing wood chips.
- As of 2009, the pellet manufacturing industry directly employs approximately 2,300 people in the U.S. while supporting thousands of related jobs in fields such as transportation and logging. (North America’s Wood Pellet Sector, Spelter & Toth, 2009)