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October 20, 2008 Business Maine

Wood plans | A selection of suggestions from the wood-to-energy task force report

Should Mainers turn to the state’s most abundant resource — wood — to heat their homes and businesses? The governor’s Wood-to-Energy task force, which has been meeting since last January, recently published a 36-page report that looks at the advantages and drawbacks of replacing expensive foreign oil with lumber from some of Maine’s 17 million acres of forests.

The report concluded that if 10% of Maine homes converted to wood-based fuel systems, the state could increase its energy independence and remain a responsible land steward. This endorsement by the 28-member panel must please the task force’s chairman, Les Otten, who recently invested $10 million in his new wood pellet boiler business in Bethel. Below are some of the policy changes the task force recommends:

  • The state should give homeowners and businesses tax incentives for converting to efficient heat sources, and set up a buyback program to help people retire old furnaces and boilers.
  • The state, in partnership with lending sources, should help homeowners and businesses obtain loans to buy more efficient heating systems.
  • The state should mitigate possible pollution from older, polluting wood stoves and boilers by modifying public nuisance laws and assuring that the Maine Dept. of Environmental Protection can investigate local complaints and monitor particulate matter.
  • A new panel should be formed to improve financing opportunities for Maine’s forest products industries to help modernize their operations.
  • The 80,000-pound weight limit on Maine’s interstates should be increased to 100,000 pounds to allow more logging trucks, and the state should better integrate its rail systems with transportation networks.
  • An educational campaign should be launched to attract more students to logging careers.
  • The state should urge the federal government to significantly increase payouts to state programs that encourage wood lot owners to improve their land’s productivity.

 

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