Climate change expert professor from Queen's is interviewed on CBC radio earlier this year.

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL GROGAN RE: WOOD STOVESWEI CHEN (CBCK-FM): Many homeowners are cranking up the heat in order to fight off the chill this winter. That means using more electricity, heating oil or natural gas. Unfortunately the result can be greater carbon dioxide emissions and higher costs. That reality prompted a study from a climate change expert at Queen’s University. He discovered that heating a home with both a natural gas furnace and a wood-burning stove is not only more energy efficient, but slightly cheaper than relying solely on fossil fuels. Paul Grogan is professor of biology at Queen’s University, and he joins us now. Good morning.PAUL GROGAN (Professor, Queen’s University): Good morning, Wei. Thanks for your interest.CHEN: Oh, well what led you to conduct this research?GROGAN: Well it’s a personal story really. We installed a wood stove about two years ago, and I’m teaching at Queen’s and we had this undergraduate course on climate change and fossil fuel issues and that kind of thing, and I said well why don’t I bring the students to the house and talk about the environmental, economic and social advantages and disadvantages of trying to supplement our domestic heating with this wood stove?CHEN: And so what did you find?GROGAN: Essentially what we did was we found that there was a 60 percent reduction in the CO2 emissions to the atmosphere as a result of heating with the wood in combination with the natural gas as opposed to prior to that when we just had natural gas.CHEN: Huh. And how much… how much of the wood stove did you use? How much natural gas? What were the percentages?GROGAN: Yeah. We pretty much kept the wood stove going as much as we could; we burned five full cords of wood which is quite a substantial amount. And then of course we did the economics to see how much did the wood cost us and how much wood we used… (inaudible) natural gas. And there’s a slight benefit to using the wood, and it’s about $50 per year as far as we could work out. But nevertheless from the environmental point of view we see there’s a huge advantage in terms of making some contribution towards reducing our CO2 emissions.CHEN: I always thought that burning a wood stove was bad because of the pollution that caused.GROGAN: Yes, that’s a very good question, and I should point out that we were using one of these high efficiency second recombustion stoves. And there are… the more traditional wood stove is not as efficient, and therefore… and one basically has to burn more wood to achieve the same heat output. And secondly and perhaps most importantly the second recombustion of the modern stove burns the smoke before it’s emitted, so the reductions in smoke are about 70 percent, so that’s a huge factor in this thing. In other words from an environmental benefit point of view, you’re reducing CO2 emissions, but the out-smoke emissions are relatively small.CHEN: Now what is the emissions that come from your wood stove then? How much compared to what comes out of the fact that you’re burning your gas?GROGAN: Right. Well… one tends to think about these things in terms of tonnes of carbon emitted per person per year. I don’t know if you remember about five or six years ago of the thing called the One Tonne Challenge?CHEN: Yeah.GROGAN: That the federal government had to try to encourage people to be more aware of the fact that they’re producing CO2 which essentially a waste product and affecting climate change. So prior to installing a wood stove we were emitting 2.5 tonnes per person per year of CO2, and then after installing a wood stove the net emissions were about one tonne per person per year. So it’s a big difference.CHEN: Now you said that you went through five cords which is quite a lot you said.GROGAN: That’s right, yeah.CHEN: So even with one of these super energy efficient wood stoves, it still goes through quite a bit. Is that a good use, even though I know it is a renewable resource, but it takes so long…GROGAN: Yeah, and that’s—CHEN: for trees to grow.GROGAN: That’s right, that’s the key factor here is that we’re considering the wood as a renewable resource, in other woods that it’s carbon neutral. So just give me a second to explain that. You know if you’re driving along the 401 and you look into the forest on either side, you’ll see trees growing, and you’ll also see dead and decaying trees. And the trees that are dying and decaying are decomposing and releasing their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. So essentially if the wood is harvested in a sustainable way, in other words if the forest is managed properly, and the dead wood or old wood is taken out, essentially by burning it in the stove, you’re just increasing the rate at which the CO2 is released into the atmosphere, but the total amount is the same whether it would burn in the stove or whether it would naturally decompose on the forest floor.CHEN: Okay, I see. So do you recommend then that everyone get a wood stove?GROGAN: Well, it’s not gonna suit everyone. So the third aspect of this study which the students really had fun with was the notion of what are the sort of lifestyle changes, the social aspects of this? So they did a survey, and the things that came out as being important from consumers’ perspective in terms of deciding perhaps to use a wood stove would be things like effectiveness of heating and operation costs and that kind of thing. But it’s very clear that older people for example may not have the energy to literally get up and stack wood, arrange for its supply and then obviously feed the fire on a regular basis. So there’s some situations where it wouldn’t really pay off. On the other hand in rural locations and where people may have their own wood lot, the economic saving is very, very substantial because obviously their wood didn’t cost anything.CHEN: Well it’s very interesting. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.GROGAN: Thank you.CHEN: Bye now.GROGAN: I’m off for a cup of fossil fuel-heated coffee.CHEN: (Laughs.) All right, bye.GROGAN: Bye.CHEN: Paul Grogan is a professor of biology at Queen’s University. We reached him this morning at his home in Kingston.*****