From the Director’s Desk: Happy New Year, The Stories We Tell
Happy New Year
I’m a sucker for the New Year. I appreciate the opportunity it can provide to turn the page, close the books on the preceding year, and envision the possibilities of the year ahead. I know it isn’t for everyone, and that January 1st could also be described as Thursday. Still, whatever your sentiments may be regarding the significance of New Year’s, I hope 2026 finds you and yours healthy, happy, and prosperous.
The Stories We Tell
Over the holiday break, an op-ed piece was published in the Washington Post that simultaneously got my dander up and reminded me of the importance of the work I do for the Pellet Fuels Institute.
The op-ed was written by Michael J. Coren and titled, “Burning Wood Isn’t Great for Earth. Here’s How to Build a Better Fire.” In it, Coren bemoans the carbon consequences of burning wood, expresses his regrets for burning his cordwood stove, and urges his readers to embrace electric heat.
After nearly two decades working in wood-derived energy, I’ve read many, many articles like Coren’s and written many rebuttals. Not surprisingly, Coren is incorrect on many fronts. Carbon science and carbon accounting are highly malleable. That statement will raise eyebrows, but in my career, I’ve watched as carbon calculators and carbon modeling are simultaneously used to support AND condemn the same energy product by its supporters and detractors. How can this be? It’s all about the assumptions built into the calculators. After reading Coren’s article, I penned a draft of a rebuttal, urging Coren to look again at the study he cited in his op-ed. I illustrated for him that wood pellets for home heating in this country are made largely from wood processing residues, a manufacturing approach that he identifies in his article as “The only scenario that delivered an immediate, but modest climate benefit.” The spirit of this sentence is that this approach is an exception, and not how most home heating pellets are produced. I typed furiously. I wondered aloud how Coren could write, “but multiple investigations have found that pellet manufacturers’ claims of using 'waste' or 'forest residues' are often misleading,” despite a decade's worth of reports from the EIA that show wood pellet manufacturers purchase millions upon millions of tons of sawmill waste each year (over 7 million tons in 2024).
Then I stopped writing.
It dawned on me that I hadn’t once mentioned, nor thought about, the business we are in and the product we make available to our customers. Wood pellet manufacturers make a cost-effective fuel that our customers use to heat their homes. We make heat. In all of the noise and chatter about carbon impact and feedstocks and carbon uptake, we lose sight of providing a means to the most basic of human needs, warmth. Immediately after that thought, I found myself thinking about how privileged some of us are to wring our hands and grouse about the carbon consequences of how we heat the space we live in.
I’m not about to concede the carbon argument to Coren. No way. In my rebuttal, I’ll direct once again to the very same study he cites and ask him to consider its findings while taking a fresh look at the feedstock data published by the EIA and so often cited here and in our conversations with state and federal policymakers.
But in this New Year, I’m resolved to spend more time celebrating the very basics of wood pellet heating. Wood pellet manufacturers take a waste product and manufacture an affordable heating fuel for hundreds of thousands of Americans who are trying to figure out how to heat their homes and feed their families in an era of stagnated earnings and massive inflation. Our customers aren’t looking for a climate solution; they are looking for heat. It is our privilege to be able to provide it.
Fear not, the PFI will continue to fight the good fight, championing the carbon benefits articulated in the study Coren himself cites because it is fundamental to maintaining our right to do business. But in addition to that, we are going to celebrate and draw attention to what I would and do argue is the single best story of waste utilization in American manufacturing.
—Tim Portz
Executive Director
