Opinions vary on the necessity and wisdom of utilizing a brand-new year as a catalyst for new goals and new resolutions. I’ve always been a big fan as a new year provides us all with a blank canvas on which to imagine our best personal and professional selves. In that spirit, I’d offer up the following as a decent start at what the PFI would like to accomplish in 2019:

1. Gain some certainty and clarity around the NSPS and what it means for pellet fuels and our downstream partners in the retail category. This one is a carryover from last year and if we’re being honest, a carryover from the last three years. That said, as 2018 ended, resolution of this issue seemed likely in 2019. Before the holidays kicked off past PFI chairman Stephen Faehner testified on PFI’s behalf at an EPA public hearing. The deadline for the submission of written comments (PFI is already at work finalizing its comments) is January 14 at which time the EPA will begin its work reviewing the comments and making their final decisions on their proposed amendments. The potential fly in the ointment is the current federal shutdown but it seems unlikely that 2019 will end without a final decision on the inclusion of minimum pellet fuel requirements, appliance sell-through provisions and other aspects of the regulation the PFI has been watching and working on for over three years.

2. Expand our ambitious Operation 100k initiative. Within the first few months of 2018, Operation 100k was imagined and initiated. The premise is simple; reestablish 100,000 units as the annual average for wood pellet burning appliances sold in the United States. The best strategy to pursue is less clear. In 2018 we designed and launched a social media beta test to carry the message of pellet heating to consumers in six target markets. Before 2018 drew to a close the test had generated two million impressions, reaching over 100,000 individual consumers. The end goal, however, is not to generate impressions but instead appliance sales. As the test draws to a close in the first months of 2019 we’ll go to work interviewing our retail partner participants to better understand the impact they feel the program had on their appliance sales during the 2018-19 heating season. In 2019, we need to push beyond our modest social media efforts. PFI recognizes that the use of social media is just one arrow in its promotional quiver and in 2019 we must diversify how we take our message of affordable, made-in-the-USA, renewable space heat to consumers.

3. Reintroduce the PFI Standards Program to retailers and consumers. PFI has developed the most robust and rigorous pellet quality program in the world and an impressive percentage of our producer members have adopted it and built their own quality assurance platform around it. Increasingly, however, we’re hearing from retailers that the pellet buying consumer isn’t clear on what it means about the pellets in the bag. In November, our board established three strategic priorities to guide PFI as it moves into 2019 and beyond and it wasn’t a surprise to me that resolving this disconnect made the top three. In many ways, we’ll have to answer the same questions to achieve this goal as we do Operation 100k. In the content overloaded world, we currently live in how do we reach the consumer at just the right time to deliver our message of the availability of pellets whose quality is assured?
4. Expand our ranks. In 2018 we worked hard to stabilize PFI and bring a renewed sense of focus to the organization. It makes sense then that in 2019 we invite new members and members who allowed their memberships to lapse to contribute to our efforts. This effort starts now. If you are reading this and nodding in approval but are not currently a member of PFI I would urge you to consider joining our cause. During our last board meeting, the PFI board authorized me to offer a discounted membership rate for new members in 2019 as we work to expand our membership and increase the voices inside of our organization. I’d love to talk to you about it. Feel free to send me a short note at [email protected] and we can establish a time to talk.

There’s certainly more to do, but if the PFI made undeniable progress on the items above we’d feel very good about what we accomplished in 2019.

Tim Portz
Executive Director