Wood Heat in Southeast Manitoba

When the South Eastman Transition Initiative met last week to discuss “How do we keep Warm” we did not know Lac du Bonnet would have a 6 hour power outage later that same week. Nevertheless, I suspect the possibility of such an outage was lurking in the mind of those attending the meeting.

Let's face it. As long as our faith is in Manitoba Hydro: that it will supply reliable electricity forever, why should we be concerned about power outages? Nothing will ever be more convenient that simply moving the thermostat up if we want more heat. But is such faith reasonable or justified?

Our focus at our meeting was wood heat. We had a good discussion. As Gabriel Gagne told us about his experiences with wood heat, it struck me how, in the wooded parts of Quebec, Ontario and the Northeast USA, there is a strong culture of wood heat. Because of this the manufacturers of modern wood stoves are situated there, there are many certified installers of masonry stoves there, and there is a culture of woodlot management. All of this is absent here on the prairies.

Because of the absence of forest on the prairies, wood heating has always been a challenge here, so when coal became available, the shift to coal, even for rural residents occurred quickly. Later when cheap hydro and natural gas became available, this too was quickly embraced. Here in southeastern Manitoba, we have the forest, but we are so much a part of the prairies, that we adopted the prairie culture.

Of course it is true that we can never heat the world with biomass. There simply is not enough biomass. But there is also no way we can continue to heat the world with natural gas or coal. One size won't fit all, and for us, living adjacent to a significant forest, wood heat is something many of us need to take seriously.

At our meeting, we heard that modern EPA certified wood stoves, not only burn significantly cleaner than non-certified stoves, they also get up to 50% more heat out of wood fuel than basic wood stoves. A good stove is expected to do two things well. First of all it is to combust the fuel as completely as possible. The only thing coming out of the chimney should be water vapour and carbon dioxide – no soot and no carbon monoxide. Both are signs of incomplete combustion. The hotter the fire, the better combustion occurs, so a stove needs to be designed to burn hot. The stove is also expected to transfer the heat generated by combustion to the room. This can only be done by cooling the hot gases. So the second function works against the first function. This is why a well designed stove separates the two functions.

Evident from our meeting was that there is also a lot of interest in solar energy. Our next meeting will be devoted to harnessing solar energy. Mark February 21 on your calendar and check our website for more, up-to-date information.

Eric Rempel

Canada's Image

World leaders recently met in Cancun for United Nations climate change negotiations, and once again Canada was one of the few countries actively working against a climate agreement. This may come as a surprise; after all, Canada is known around the world as a nation of beautiful, unspoiled nature, full of people who are in touch with the soil and the forests, where wildlife flourishes and fish are plentiful. Growing up, that was the image I had of Canada, and it was a point of pride for me. Canada, I thought, was one of the last places on earth that remained pure and wild, and it would stay that way because Canadians value nature like no others. That is what I thought.

Our actual record of protecting the environment is far from the ideal I thought I knew as a child. Even though we committed to the Kyoto Protocol, we’ve spent most of our time since then trying to get out of it. The Kyoto Protocol was the result of a climate conference in which all of the nations involved pledged to take concrete steps to meet solid targets for environmental progress, particularly in regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The pledges made there were to be binding, yet Canada has actually increased greenhouse gas emissions dramatically since the Kyoto agreement, and nobody has held our government accountable. Who can? At the climate talks in Copenhagen last year, Canada was the recipient of the “fossil award”: we were the least willing, of all of the nations involved, to take climate action. The fossil award is an international embarrassment. Is there any way we can now reclaim our international image? And finally, at the talks in Cancun, Canada was one of only three nations who attempted to block an extension of the Kyoto protocol. On the train of international progress, Canada is leaning on the brake lever. But if the (supposedly) binding requirements of the Kyoto Protocol aren’t enforced by the UN, and international embarrassment isn’t enough to get our government’s attention, then who can hold them accountable?

We can. Our government is ultimately only accountable to us, the citizens. This is our country, and taking care of the environment is our responsibility – and that includes what the government does in our name. Canada’s tar sands are one of the largest devastations of nature in the world, and the oil money they provide is the main reason our government keeps trying to shirk its environmental obligations. Write your representative to let them know that you’re not okay with expanding the tar sands at the expense of not only Canada’s environment, but of the global climate. And at the same time, make changes in your own consumption: the less oil we use, the less we’ll need the tar sands. Invest in renewable energy, rather than oil companies. Educate yourself. After all, the only difference between the beautiful image of Canada I grew up with and our current international image as the world’s biggest “fossil” is human behaviour.

Jeff Wheeldon

How do we Keep Warm

I am of an age when I can remember a rural community where wood heat was the norm. Every year my father would hire a local youth, provide him with an axe, and send him into the bush ½ mile away to cut the next winter's firewood supply.

In 1956 my parents built a new house. In this house they installed an oil burning furnace. I don't recall the rational that justified this shift from wood heat to oil heat, but I expect it was considered a sound decision, based on economics. On the one hand there was the time and cost that went into felling the trees, getting them to the yard, cutting them to length, getting the dried wood into the house, and stoking the fire. On the other hand, all that was needed was a call for the fuel delivery truck, and the fuel would be pumped into the storage tank. Marvellously, a thermostat controlled the room temperature. Viewed that way, the fuel oil option made sense. But I do not think my parents even considered, at that time, that they were substituting a non-renewable, fossil energy, transported thousands of miles for a renewable, local energy source.

But that was the beginning. That was followed by the Trans-Canada Gas pipeline in 1958, and in 1967 the Nelson River power stations were first connected to the provincial power system.

Today we are more or less dependant on Alberta natural gas and hydro electricity generated in northern Manitoba for our home heating. Were either of these energy sources to be seriously disrupted during cold weather, people in southern Manitoba would die! Is it that hard to envision an accident, a terrorist attack or a natural disaster that would result in such a disruption? Is it reasonable to expect gas from Alberta to keep flowing for ever?

But we don't need to be that vulnerable. Last week I wrote here about an energy policy of Fee and Dividend. Such a policy would significantly increase the cost of energy from distant sources, but it would also put money into our pocket that we could choose to use to improve energy efficiency. I find it exciting just thinking about where that might lead.

But it seems unlikely that we are going to get the political leadership that will give us a rational energy policy. So what can we do? Ought we to go back to the way things were being done 75 years ago? No! We have learned a great deal about many aspects of energy efficient design since then.

There is much that our local government could do to encourage preparedness. 95% of homes being built today are built with today's energy picture in mind, rather than a reasonable projection towards the future. Visionary local government leadership could give us building codes that would provide an incentive (both negative and positive) to builders and developers to orient houses for solar gain.

And there are things we can do as individuals. Join us for a discussion of this on January 18 at Steinbach 55 Plus. For more information check our web site.

Eric Rempel

This column is prepared by the South Eastman Transition Initiative, advocating sustainable lifestyles in southeastern Manitoba. Go to southeasttransition.com.