Take that, Hugo Chavez

[jhetley]

(Or Exxon-Mobil, depending on your political bent...)

Neighbor has just acquired eight pallet loads of (bagged) wood pellets for his next-winter's fuel, a good number of tons which he will have to transfer, bag by bag, into his cellar and thence into the furnace.  One bite of elephant at a time.

Maine-made OPEC.

Comments

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

Organization of Pellet Exporting Counties?

Actually, there was a story in the Boston Globe a couple of days ago. (http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2008/05/former_ski_reso.html) Apparently, a former Red Sox owner (Les Otten, who also used to own Sunday River) is starting a company whose business plan involves converting ten percent of oil-heated Maine homes to wood pellet boilers in the next five years. If oil stays expensive, it makes some sense.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Maine has been shipping wood pellets to Europe for a few years now. I find the economics of that confusing.

We saw a fair amount of press on Les Otten's proposal. Not sure how much "waste wood" he can soak up before his operation starts to compete with lumber and pulp operations.

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

I always liked the idea of a pellet stove. Don't really need one out here, but in the winter it's cold enough to really enjoy the fireplace. We burn Java logs, all natural and made (in Canada, I think?) from recycled coffee grounds. One log burns about 2-3 hours, and crackles nicely. Way less particulate matter, too.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Back when we lived in New Jersey (long story involving Uncle Sam's Army), we used to feed the fireplace off beach driftwood. Since that gave us clean-up virtue points, it counted as win-win.

I guess you're too far inland for that.