AS GAS and oil prices have continued to rise, for a fuel of the past the future is looking bright.
Growing numbers of householders are turning to wood as a fuel and tomorrow the North’s first firewood auction will be staged in Northumberland.
It is part of a firewood fair at Meldon Park near Morpeth, which seeks to bring wood users, producers and stove and boiler retailers together.
Experts will also be on hand to advise converts to wood on how to make the most of the fuel.
In Northumberland there are more than 1,500 people employed within the timber industry, which contributes more than £40m to the local economy.
Most of the Forestry Commission’s output goes to the commercial timber sector so private woodlands in the region are expected to help meet the rising demand.
There are around 125,000 acres of private woodlands in the North East but it is estimated that half are under-managed because it has been economically worthwhile to do so.
The demand for wood is now changing that, together with a new Forestry Commission woodland woodfuel grant which will help owners pay for woodland roads and tracks to be built so timber can be extracted from often difficult locations.
“Some private woods are not managed because they were planted on inaccessible terrain, making harvesting tough and previously uneconomic,” says Ben Tansey from Rothbury-based woodlands initiative organisation Northwoods, which supports forestry and woodfuel production and is organising tomorrow’s event.
“But with this new grant it becomes a much more viable proposition.”
Ian Everard from the Forestry Commission says: “It’s great news that more people are going down the woodfuel route, but a bottleneck could be a lack of locally-supplied timber.
“That means we need to get more felling and planting into our neglected woods in the North East. For smaller woodland owners, it now stacks up economically.”
Woodlands managed by felling, thinning and replanting are better for biodiversity, and the removal of conifers allows the restoration of previously ancient woodland sites.
An increasing number of woodfuel boilers are also being installed in schools, hotel and offices.
Last week The Journal reported how the 53-bedroom Matfen Hall Hotel, Golf and Spa in Northumber- land has switched from oil to a biomass boiler using woodchip from the surrounding 500 acres of woodland to provide heat and hot water.
“The wood fuel market has been growing for the past five years as oil and gas prices have gone up,” says Ian. “A lot of people will think of wood supply in the past as a man with a chainsaw but advances in technology have made wood as easy to use as fossil fuels.”
