We all remember that goofy moment in President Bush’s energy speech a while back when he brought up “switchgrass” and we all ran for our dictionaries (or Google) to figure out what he was on about. Whatever the merits of fuel made from dry weeds, something you probably will see more of, and sooner, is wood pellets.
Any place that cuts trees at an industrial scale, say, Canada, the Northeastern U.S., or the West, produces literal mountains of sawdust. These are compacted down into a fuel that looks like rabbit food but burns at an emission rate pretty close to oil or natural gas. Pellets are already a big fuel choice in Europe, where pollutions standards are strict, but you can expect more U.S. pellet making companies to follow suit. (Here’s a list of suppliers.) One pellet investor went so far as to convert a Mercedes-Benz truck to a pellet-burning version.
