Wood as a heating material

There is one obvious solution for many people: good old wood. It works without any gas or electricity, grows back and provides cosy heat for cold homes. However, not even this is proving to be as simple as it looks, as Christoph Reimann, the authorised signatory at the wood logistics firm, Bruno Reimann, explains, because many other people have already hit on this idea too. 1.1 million households in Germany already use wood as their primary source of energy, while another 11.2 million have some kind of stove in order to obtain warmth in their homes alongside other types of heating. But anybody who has tried to obtain wood for their cosy little fire this year knows that the rising energy costs have had an impact on the demand for wood as a source of energy too – and this has also affected the prices. The Holz-Reimann wood company is well aware of the trend within the sector. It handles all the stages that wood undergoes from the harvesting process to the logistics and even the wood retail sector. The range of products consisting of firewood, wood pellets, briquettes and wood chips is attracting private and industrial customers and the company has now made a name for itself as a quality supplier.

Customers are paying up to double the price for their firewood this year in comparison with the previous year,’ Christoph Reimann explains (status as of October 2022). Many of them are ordering large quantities and there are long waiting lists that they have to join in order to obtain this heating material at all. But is this enormous struggle to obtain wood justified? Reimann is certain of one thing. ‘In our view, the increase in demand is primarily motivated by a sense of panic.’

Customers’ estimates of how much firewood they need are often very high and this includes those customers who have never yet lit their stove or have rarely done so. ‘People are now ordering as much wood as would normally be enough to heat their homes for two full years,’ Reimann says, describing the buying behaviour. While almost all the traders have run out of wood at some stage, the Holz-Reimann wood company has continued to supply more and more orders from its online shop. To ensure that they can supply regular customers, they have had to cap the amounts that many new customers can order.

Overall, there is no doubt whatsoever that spending a cosy winter’s evening around a wood-burning stove will be a much more expensive business this year. ‘Despite this, it’s still worth using wood as a source of heat,’ says Christoph Reimann, offering his advice. ‘In the end, we’re talking about a raw material that’s regionally available in Germany and that grows back – thanks to its intense vegetation levels involving 11.4 million hectares of forests, Germany even has more wood available than Sweden, for example.’

However, Reimann lists some other benefits as well: by purchasing wood, people are supporting regional jobs and companies. On the one hand, they’re then not so dependent on imports from crisis regions while, on the other hand, sustainability levels are far higher because of the much shorter supply chain compared to oil from the Middle East, for example. Then there are the positive properties of wood, such as its CO₂ balance sheet. Regardless of which type of heating is used, one kilogram of wood corresponds to about five kilowatt hours. It is true that CO₂ is given off when the wood is burnt, but this is always exactly the amount that the wood absorbed when it was growing. As a CO₂-neutral source of energy, wood therefore accounts for 65 per cent of the biomass from which renewable energy is obtained. This is used to both make heat available and generate electricity. As the German Federal Ministry of Agriculture states, it was possible to save approx. 32 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2020 by using wood as a climate-neutral alternative to fossil energy.³

It is therefore clear that wood is an alternative that needs to be taken seriously. This only raises the question of which type of heating is most suitable. Reimann believes that the type of usage always depends on the need in each case and on the size of the buildings that need to be heated.

The high level of demand for wood is definitely fully justified. Heating with wood is not only environmentally friendly and guarantees a warm home in times of geopolitical unrest and a shortage of resources, but pellet heating systems also offer a real alternative to heating with fossil sources of energy for cost reasons in the long term. A wood-burning stove is also a stylish decorative item in a home and operates despite any shortage of electricity and gas. However, nobody needs to panic and immediately order four years’ worth of firewood. ‘The price of gas is going down again, so let’s see how much panic will be left over in the end,’ Reimann suggests, looking to the future. It is naturally a good thing that the piles of wood in stock have such excellent storage properties.