Pellet stove owners left holding the bag

Precious pellets are hard to come by this year

By FRITZ MAYER

YOUNGSVILLE, NY — In the arena of wood pellet fuel, the law of supply and demand is running amuck this season: demand is higher than ever, but supplies have all but disappeared. Mark Schroeder, owner of Countryside Stove & Chimney, said he thinks he’s getting one more miserly shipment of 22 tons of pellets this year, and the pellets are already spoken for. He won’t have nearly enough to serve his customers, and they are not happy. “They spent $3,000 on a stove, and they can’t use it. They’re upset,” he said.

Pellets are also sold out at Cochecton Mills in Cochecton. Employee Sean Nearing said he doesn’t know when the next shipment will come in. Right now, he’s not making any promises.

The situation is the same at Home Depot in Monticello and Tractor Supply in Liberty.

Stove sales were three times higher than usual in late summer and fall, according to Schroeder, when homeowners were preparing for soaring fuel prices. He said in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, much of the wood byproducts that would have gone to making fuel pellets were diverted to making particleboard for reconstruction in the Gulf states.

Some folks saw the shortage coming and hoarded the pellets.

“Now,” Schroeder said, “they’re selling them on eBay for three or four times as much as usual. It’s sad.” It’s especially sad, he said, for folks with pellet stoves as their only source of heat.

So, why can’t they just start cranking out more pellets?

Ron Leofsky, CEO of Allegheny Pellets just outside of Erie, PA, said the industry can’t create more pellets overnight. The raw materials for the pellets are byproducts from the manufacture of wood products, such as flooring. And it can’t be just any byproducts. According to Leofsky, “it has to be kiln-dried wood so the moisture content is right.”

In fact, the pellet industry has come up with exacting rules regulating the burnable bits, such as a minimum weight of 40 pounds per cubic foot, a maximum salt content of 300 parts per million and on and on.

The consensus among local dealers is that the shortage will exist through the winter. But, Don Kaiser, Executive Director of The Pellet Institute, said the long-term outlook for the pellet industry is rosy. “We’ll be adding capacity, new mills,” he said. He predicted that there will be 35 percent more capacity next year.

Pellets store in a smaller space than wood, are more efficient, cost less and have environmental benefits. A chart on the institute’s web site, www.pelletheat.org, indicates that wood pellets are better than oil and even natural gas when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants that create acid rain.

That’s all fine, but what are all those stove owners supposed to do for heat this year? Folks with multi-fuel stoves could have turned to cherry pits. Robert Fox of Tractor Supply said he was selling cherry pit fuel earlier this year, and customers loved it. Cherry pits are cheaper that wood pellets and, said Fox, “they leave a slight fragrance in the air.” Problem is, the suppliers are clean out of pits and they probably won’t be shipping any more until the summer.

There are other substitutes such as pecan shells, switch grass and corn, but these are not easy to come by. And for Schroeder’s customers in Youngsville, the alternative fuels are no alternative at all, because the supplier he works with deals exclusively with stoves that burn wood pellets. For some of those customers, it’s likely to be a long, cold winter.