If you are one of those people who installed a wood pellet boiler or stove with a Greener Homes Grant you’ll know how difficult it has been to source wood pellets over the last few months.

The situation has been particularly bad in the North West. The nearest place I was able to get them before Christmas was Ballymahon in Longford, so when I heard that Joe Simons in Boyle had taken a delivery I immediately headed over to get a few bags.

The pellets Joe is stocking are particularly good quality: very dense and no dust whatsoever. This makes a big difference in terms of the heat they generate.

But here’s the thing: they’re shipped all the way from Argentina!

This really frustrates me. I know that South American timber is much drier than Irish timber, and is particularly suited to heat generation, but surely there has to be a way that we can generate heat fuel of our own!

For instance, surely it would be better if we were producing our own miscanthus (Elephant Grass) which can be used in power stations to produce electricty, which could then be used for heat generation? And why do we not have funding of development to produce Irish timber that is more suited to heat generation?

I’ll be heading over to Simons again in the weeks to come. I can’t believe that my radiators are being heated with a renewable fuel produced in Argentina. It just doesn’t make sense…..

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