ENERGY 9

From CFI

DATE

January 21, 2005

(figures revised February 17, 2005)

RESEARCHER

Richard Jergenson

QUESTION

What is total firewood use in cords per year?

ASSUMPTIONS

A detailed household survey was not conducted, and so we can only expect to approximate the true amount. The goal is to provide a perspective on the scale of use. The Air Quality officials were contacted because they are concerned about particulate levels and therefore pay attention to patterns of wood combustion.

ANSWER

There are about 5105 homes in the Willits area and about 80% of these have wood burning stoves or fireplaces (. Assuming the average amount burned in a year is 1.5 cords, yields 7657.5 total cords per year.

If there are about 14,000,000 btu in a cord of wood (assuming mostly hardwood) then we burn 10.72 x 1010 btu per year ("100 trillion, 720 million"). In therms, this figure is 10.72 x 105 .

SOURCES

Personal communication with Mendocino County Air Quality Management employee, Chris Brown. January 2005. http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/index.html