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Comment by radicalbyte | Hacker News Reader

For heating it makes the most sense to use gas and put subsidies into insulation.

In The Netherlands we are - for some boneheaded reason - killing gas and replacing it with burning wood. With the subsidy spent on that we could insulate every building in the country to a high level and have a massive war chest left over to further build out EV infrastructure.

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Modern wood burners are quite efficient at full combustion and wood is a renewable, carbon neutral fuel if sourced from sustainable forestry. Pellet burners are particularly excellent.

It's counter-intuitive but compared to burning non-renewable, a valid option for reducing co2 emissions.

Meanwhile in the UK... about 10 years ago I bought a wood burning stove that was built to meet UK clean air regulations. I have a friend with a wood, so I thought I would do my bit for CO2 emissions Unfortunately, currently particulate pollution is enemy number 1, so wood burning stoves get you tutted at.

"More or Less" on BBC Radio 4 did an investigation of the supposed particulate pollution from wood burners. Basically, although data is thin (and misused by HM Gov), if you have a modern stove and properly dried wood you won't be a particulate polluter.

Thermodynamically speaking heat pumps or using waste heat from other processes makes more sense than burning gas just to heat a home.

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