Rising energy costs have made residential outdoor wood boilers more popular than ever, but not with neighbors and officials concerned with their thick smoke and high particulate emissions.
Eugene Kelly, assistant state attorney general, will talk on “Coping With Rising Residential Energy Prices With Outdoor Wood Boilers: An Innovative Solution or a New Environmental Problem?” on Wednesday, Feb. 1, at 7 p.m. in the Nott Memorial at Union College.
His talk, part of the College's Environmental Studies program series on “Sustainable Energy,” is free and open to the public.
Kelly is a co-author of a recent report from the state Office of the Attorney General Environmental Protection Bureau, “Smoke Gets in Your Lungs: Outdoor Wood Boilers in New York State.” The report begins: “State law enforcement, health and environmental agencies have received a growing number of complaints from people asserting that Outdoor Wood Boilers (OWBs) produce thick, acrid, foul smoke that permeates buildings and homes, causing not only a nuisance, but also environmental degradation and health problems.
“Even when operated using clean seasoned wood, OWBs can emit significant pollution because the basic design of the OWB causes fuel to burn incompletely. The problem is aggravated when other materials such as wet wood, processed wood, and garbage are burned.
“Governments … have enacted regulations or outright bans of OWBs in an effort to combat this rapidly growing phenomenon. These governmental actions are, depending on one's interests, frequently welcomed as either necessary for the protection of public health and the environment or decried as another example of unreasonable governmental interference.”