By Catherine Owen Koning, Originally Published in The Monadnock Shopper News, Green Monadnock column, January 2026.
Winter in New Hampshire…when the most common phrase heard across many households is, “have you checked the fire lately”? From inefficient fireplaces to slick new pellet stoves to fancy wood gasification boilers, wood is an excellent, locally sourced, traditional way to heat your home. But legitimate worries about climate pollution and the lung-clogging smoke and ash that come from burning wood have many people considering other options.
Burning wood should be “carbon neutral”, meaning that the amount of carbon pollution produced should be balanced by what the trees take in as they grow. When we set a log afire, it releases carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is one of the major “greenhouse gases” that act like an atmospheric blanket, trapping in heat. Burning anything releases this climate pollution, whether it is wood, coal, oil, gasoline, or a pile of trash. Since all plants take in carbon dioxide as they grow, and woody plants like trees store that carbon in their branches and trunks, ideally, carbon burned=carbon stored. A carefully managed forest should grow as many trees as are cut down every year to keep this balance.
The problem is, the planet is heating up so fast, the trees can’t grow back fast enough to absorb the carbon dioxide from the wood (and fossil fuels) we burn to slow down climate change.
In addition to planet-warming carbon dioxide, burning wood also produces tiny particles of smoke and ash that contribute to lung disease. Modern pellet stoves and wood gasification systems produce less of this kind of pollution, compared to traditional wood stoves. Wood gasification boilers are extra efficient because they burn in a two-stage process that extracts more energy from the wood, producing less creosote in the chimney and less climate pollution overall – yet, still significant particulates and smoke.
Heat pumps, also called mini-splits, use electricity to create heat, but are much more efficient than regular plug-in electric heaters. Heat pumps use a refrigerant system that moves heat into the house to warm up (hard to believe it, but even at 5 degrees F there
= is heat in the outside air) or out of the house when you are trying to cool down. When the heat pumps are powered by fossil-fuel based electrical power, climate pollution results, but far less of that pollution, per unit of heat, compared to wood. If the electricity is produced by burning coal (which no longer happens in New England!), then the wood gasification boiler or pellet stove is less polluting than the heat pump. If the electricity is produced by burning natural gas, by nuclear, hydroelectric, or best of all, wind or solar, then the heat pump is the most climate friendly choice compared to wood boilers, pellet stoves or even household natural gas boilers.
Of course, economics plays into this as well, not only the short-term and long-term costs of installing a couple of heat pumps and paying electric bills forever, or buying a new wood stove or boiler and buying (and hauling) wood forever. And, if we are to keep our forests, we may need to keep our sustainable forestry industry in business by maintaining a demand for wood. Complicated choices for a complex world!
In our house, being the luddites that we are, we approach new technology carefully. “We” (meaning, my husband) installed one heat pump in the main section of the house. It allows us to heat without running the wood gasification boiler at all in spring and fall, and the cooling function was much appreciated in the hottest part of last summer. The heat pump is powered with clean electricity from our ground-mounted solar system.
Apparently we are not alone in this hybrid approach. In researching this article, I ran across this quote from a contractor-homeowner: “Simply supplementing our gas boiler with a mini-split heat pump has cut our carbon emissions by almost 4 tons a year — more than if we took our car off the road entirely” (https://www.houseandhammer.com). Interested in exploring heat pumps for your home? Contact the MonadnockSustainabilityHub.org to work with a FREE energy coach to help with planning and funding!
Catherine Owen Koning is a Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge NH. She is also a board member of the Monadnock Sustainability Hub, which strengthens the sustainability and resilience of our region by working collaboratively to reduce climate pollution and reach 100% clean energy.