PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 22, 2021
In the Northeast, where snow regularly falls into late April, heating our homes and buildings accounts for 40.3 million tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions from more than 3.6 billion gallons of heating oil – not to mention the other fossil fuels used for heat. Our first responsibility is to reduce the amount of heat we use through increased energy-efficiency measures. Second, we must reconsider the fuels we use and apply an all-renewables approach. In the Northern forest, we sustainably harvest timber as part of integrated forest management and use sawmill waste to create solid wood fuel that is delivered to homes just as oil and propane are. But, instead of contributing to the problem, modern wood heat reduces net carbon dioxide emissions by more than 50 percent. ~ Rob Riley, Northern Forest Center, and Roger Milliken, Baskahegan Co., which owns and manages 150,000 acres of green-certified forestland in Maine