I’m a big fan of “Top Five” lists, particularly when looking back through a year that is nearly complete. Recently, I’ve been talking a lot about how our time in Washington, D.C. was arguably the most productive day with the PFI in my tenure. That got me thinking about what other days this year could make my top five list. Here they are, in reverse order:

5) 2020 Annual Conference Site Visit (August 14) 

A strong annual conference is vital to any trade association. After hosting a very strong and successful conference earlier in the year (see #3), the PFI conference committee was eager to begin setting the table for an even more successful event in 2020. Together with conference Committee Chair Kenny Lisle (Energex), I traveled to Milwaukee to inspect the conference hotel and identify some entertainment possibilities for our conference attendees. We left Milwaukee confident that we’d selected a great city for our event, and that the strong momentum we generated in Hershey at our 2019 conference will carry forward into 2020. 

4) Pacific Northwest Chairman's Tour (April 24)

Don Wagner (Appalachian Wood Pellets) launched the idea of a chairman’s tour last fall, and past-chair Stan Elliot (Pacific Coast Pellets) liked it so much he organized a trip through the Pacific Northwest in the spring. The trip included the three hallmarks of a quality chairman’s tour; a look around the chairman’s facility, a handful of retailer visits and a conversation with a nonmember producer. Of particular interest was our time spent with Coastal Farm & Ranch, a regional multilocation retailer who set a very high bar for wood pellet appliance retailing. Coastal’s hearth store within a store concept is impressive, and wood pellet users in the region are well-served by an organization that boasts an impressive roster of knowledgeable wood pellet appliance professionals. Finally, we were thrilled the good folks at Packsaddle Pellets agreed to invite us into their operation to discuss their business and the role the PFI plays in the industry.  A face-to-face conversation is a great way to begin a dialogue about the benefits of PFI membership and the work the organization is doing for the industry.

3) Opening Day PFI Annual Conference (June 5)

When we selected the Hershey Lodge for our 2019 event, we were excited about the venue and the opportunity to fold in an important industry tour (Hearth & Home Technologies) into our agenda, but the relative success of the event was still an unknown. By the time our opening reception had kicked off, it was clear that the 2019 conference was going to be a success by any measure. The conference enjoyed strong participation beginning with the board meeting on Tuesday all the way through the industry tour on Friday. The panel discussions on Thursday were robust, loaded with detail (the presentation from Connor Murphy at the U.S. EIA comes to mind) and looked closely at our industry through the lens of both retailers and producers. Finally, the show was a financial success which is far from certain for association events. 

2) Chairman's Tour – Maine (September 16)

When current chairman John Utter (Lignetics) asked me how I felt about touring Maine and New Hampshire for his chairman’s tour, I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation. Until this trip, I’d never been to Maine, and I was completely blown away in both a personal and professional capacity. The state’s beauty strikes anyone who visits almost immediately, myself included. From a professional standpoint, I don’t think I’ve been to a part of this country where our industry is more immediately visible than Maine. When I arrived, consumers had already started receiving their first pellet orders, and home after home had a pallet or two of pellets sitting in the driveway. John checked all the boxes and we met with member facilities, retailers and nonmember facilities.

1) Pellet Fuels Institute Fly-In (October 30) 

This really wasn’t a contest—in fact, I’ve described our fall board meeting and fly-in as the best day of my two-year tenure as executive director of the PFI. If you are completely unfamiliar with what we accomplished while we were in D.C. together, you can read the entire recap here. We were able to put together a nice-sized footprint, holding meetings at 36 different congressional offices and talking about our industry and how federal policy impacts us. Shortly after our trip, provisions from the BTU Act were included in the House’s green energy tax package, certainly the most promising development in the legislation’s 10-year history. Finally, we had an important conversation with Anne Idsal, the acting assistant administrator at the U.S. EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. For the past five years, the PFI has been fighting the inclusion of hastily considered and poorly crafted minimum pellet fuel requirements in the New Source Performance Standards. While we still don’t know about the EPA’s final decision on the matter, we were happy to have the opportunity to share our concerns with the right folks at the EPA in person.