Pursuing a New CSA Standard to Heat Canada with Wood Pellets
As the world’s coldest country, Canada consumes a lot of energy for home heating. Space heating accounts for 64 percent of Canadian residential, commercial and institutional energy consumption. The most common energy sources are natural gas, electricity and heating oil.
Compare this with Sweden and Finland, where biomass is the dominant heat energy source. In Sweden, biomass provides 66 percent of space heating, and in Finland, the figure is 59 percent. The two countries use district heating networks and modern small-scale biomass boilers designed to the European standard EN 303-5.
Biomass central heating is a mainstay in much of Europe. Western European boiler manufacturers have invested heavily in the research and design of pellet boilers, creating efficient and clean-burning systems that are fully automatic and reliable. The most advanced of these boilers recover heat from flue gas, so even condensation isn’t seen leaving these chimneys on cold days.
These new technologies aren’t generally available in Canada because existing Canadian safety standards are only appropriate for fossil fuel-fired boilers. They do not consider the latest biomass-fired boiler technologies.
Read the full article on pellet.org.