From the Director’s Desk: 48 Hours in D.C.
48 Hours in D.C.
On Monday night, PFI Legislative and Policy Affairs Committee Chair Frank Kvietok (Lignetics) and I dropped into Washington, D.C., to spend two days in a series of conversations in an effort we dubbed Allies & Agencies.
We met with representatives from the American Wood Council, U.S. Industrial Pellet Association, U.S. Forest Service, White House Council on Environmental Quality, Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, and the Office of Air and Radiation. We also made time to attend a House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting entitled Appliance and Building Policies: Restoring the American Dream of Home Ownership and Consumer Choice (see Industry News) and met with a legislative assistant from Rep. Langworthy’s (NY-23rd) office. Rep. Langworthy has introduced the Energy Choice Act.
While our conversations were varied and ranged from our sector’s wood residual usage to the PFI Standards Program and the annual volume of pellets that falls under its auspices, the trip’s two principal goals were to actively engage in the discussions around fuel choice and gain intelligence about potential revisions to the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) Wood Heater Rule—the regulation that governs emissions from wood and wood pellet appliances and wood pellet fuel.
I’ve included a Biomass Magazine news item from October of last year in the Industry News section that outlines a consent decree issued to the EPA to review the NSPS by the end of 2026 and, if necessary, issue a revised NSPS by the end of 2027. Within the NSPS are emissions limits for wood-burning appliances, test methodologies to determine those emissions, and guidance on wood pellet manufacturing that includes a list of prohibited feedstocks (animal carcasses among them).
Remember that when the last NSPS was issued in 2015, a list of minimum pellet fuel quality parameters was included, along with the list of prohibited materials that initially included “seasoned wood” and wood pallet residues. The pellet materials and quality parameters were a mess and showed little understanding of how wood pellets are manufactured, and it was thought to put most producers out of compliance. The PFI and others took action, ultimately achieving an amendment to the pellet quality section that remedied our biggest complaints.
With the EPA mandated to review the rule, we felt it was important to remind the agency of the challenges and problems their rule initially introduced to the sector in 2015. We were joined in the two meetings focused on this effort by Jason Tolleson, Senior Director of Government Affairs for the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association.
Wood pellet quality within the NSPS has required constant vigilance for over a decade for the PFI. There is an ongoing dance between regulators and regulated parties across all sectors, and the wood heating sector is no different. To write rules governing a sector, you have to know something about how the sector operates and how it doesn’t (including animal carcasses in a pellet mill, for instance). To fully understand how a sector operates, you have to engage the sector. The process builds some of this in formally via public comment periods, allowing industry to respond to proposed rules—but to do it right, it takes much more.
Our conversation on Wednesday, reminding the EPA that the PFI Standards Program was written and developed in close cooperation with the agency, has been highly successful in guaranteeing consumers ready access to high-quality, third-party-tested wood pellets. While many of our members were “there” during those initial conversations with the EPA while the PFI Standards Program was being developed, the number of agency folks who were is dwindling. For that reason, we felt it important to remind the current rule writers of the years-long efforts to arrive at the language we have today. Our hope is that the agency won’t unwittingly reintroduce the problematic items we worked so hard to get remedied.
The fuel choice discussion was a dizzying and even frustrating reminder of the partisan nature of so many debates in Congress. For now, fuel choice legislation is a highly partisan issue, with Republicans introducing and driving all of the fuel choice bills that have been brought into committees. Of 86 co-sponsors for Rep. Langworthy’s bill, just two are Democrats (Gonzales – TX, Gray – CA).
The hearing was a bit of a mudfight, whereby moments of real debate were few and far between. D.C. veterans know that committee meetings are prone to posturing and grandstanding, but that can be difficult to accept when it’s your industry eyeing increasing restrictions to marketplace access across the country.
We shared with Rep. Langworthy’s legislative assistant that while there is no wood pellet production in his district, our members did source wood fiber from sawmills within his district and that our product was most certainly sold in hearth shops in his district and burned by his constituents. While the congressman likely wasn’t holding wood pellets in mind when he drafted the legislation, we wanted to connect our sector with efforts to preserve consumer heating fuel choice.
We will continue to stay close to both of these issues in the PFI’s ongoing mission to protect marketplace access for our members, while also working to ensure regulation is right-sized and well-informed.
—Tim Portz
Executive Director
