Long before oil and propane became the standard for heating residential and commercial buildings, wood provided heat for both cooking and heating.
Fireplaces and then wood stoves provided warmth in cold winter climates for centuries, until central heating replaced them.
However, heating and cooking with wood has had its problems.
Burning wood isn't the cleanest method of heating; conventional woodstoves and fireplaces put a lot of both gaseous and particulate pollutants into the air, as well as coating chimneys and stovepipes with a gummy, highly flammable substance called creosote.
Before the advent of oil-based central heating, many chimney fires each year, caused by the igniting of creosote build-up, resulted in the loss of thousands of homes and many lives.
Enter the wood pellet.
Sawdust and other plant materials such as wood chips and, in some cases, nut hulls, are compressed into these tiny pellets.
New, energy-efficient, clean-burning stoves especially designed to burn wood pellets have turned wood into a safe, economical, and environmentally sound way to heat homes.
Wood pellets are manufactured in over 60 locations around the United States, making their production a local industry in many communities.
There's an advantage to this also; local production of energy sources eliminates the need for transporting the fuels long-distance, saving on the energy costs associated with shipping and resulting in lower prices for the consumer.
As more attention is paid to the costs of conventional home heating fuels and the heightened worries over global warming, wood pellets promise to be a popular, low-cost alternative to fuel oil and propane.