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Wood pellets are usually pressed from wood shavings and sawdust
Photo: Z1003 Jens Büttner/ dpa
Oil embargo against Russia, delivery stop through the gas pipeline Nord Stream 1 – the news made
Martin Bremker
(53) ponder.
All his life he has heated with gas.
Gas prices in Germany are now experiencing a rapid increase.
A new record almost every day.
In order to still be able to heat in winter, Bremker switched to the alternative heating method with wood pellets.
The pellet central heating cost 35,000 euros, which was subsidized by the Federal Funding for Efficient Buildings (BEG).
A powerful investment: it was three times more expensive than oil or gas heating.
Bremker drove to the hardware store to get fuel for his new heating system.
But the wood pellets were sold out.
There weren't any more in the neighboring town either.
Only a week later could he really use his heating, since the products were only then delivered later.
He stocked up on a large amount of pellets so as not to have to stand in front of empty shelves again so quickly.
This is not an isolated case.
Many consumers are currently switching from gas and oil to wood.
Some even get a chainsaw driver's license for it.
The demand for it at Dekra increased by around a third in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period last year.
If you can show such a driver's license and have also received permission from the responsible forestry office to use a felled tree, you can significantly reduce your wood procurement costs.
Heating with pellets pressed from wood waste, i.e. wood shavings and shavings, is becoming increasingly popular.
According to the German Energy Wood and Pellet Association, there were 570,000 pellet heating systems in Germany in 2021.
The demand for firewood among foresters, forest management communities and forest owners is exploding," confirms the Bund Deutscher Forstleute (BDF). The trend: rising.
The desire of many Germans to be as independent as possible of gas and oil when it comes to heating has led to a veritable bonanza on the wood and pellet market.
Fraudsters also take advantage of this: Customers are led to fake websites by means of supposedly cheap prices and asked to pay in advance or down payment - for firewood, which does not exist.
Then the money is gone.
Prices and demand for pellets have risen to a record high - the price advantage over heating oil has shrunk to zero
There can no longer be any talk of cheap purchase prices.
Inflation has also affected wood as a raw material.
Pellet prices rose by 86 percent in August compared to the same month last year.
This was announced by the Federal Statistical Office on Thursday.
Prices rose more than ten times as much as consumer prices overall.
The price for wood pellets was around 400 euros per ton in August, which corresponds to a price of 13.66 cents per kilowatt hour, as determined by the German Pellet Institute (DEPI).
In August, that was still an advantage of around ten percent over oil and 20 percent over gas.
Since then, however, the price of pellets has continued to rise, faster than the price of oil.
The result: In September, the price advantage of pellets compared to heating oil shrank to zero, according to DEPI data.
Heating with wood pellets is currently not cheaper than heating with fuel oil - a novelty.
The DEPI emphasizes that on a long-term average, wood pellets still offer a significant price advantage over oil and gas.
But that only applies if the pellet price comes back from the current September record high and does not rise faster than the oil price.
Since June, the price advantage has melted from 40 percent to zero.
According to DEPI, the price rally has various causes.
Numerous new customers who have replaced oil and gas heating systems with pellet heating systems as part of energy-related renovations.
In addition, there are delivery bottlenecks and additional bottlenecks caused by panic buying and hoarding large quantities of pellets.
Wood is thus the new sunflower oil: The unrest on the energy markets is hitting the pellet market to an unforeseeable extent.
Heating with wood is particularly interesting for homeowners who already have a well-insulated house.
For others, it may be more economical to invest in improved insulation first than to switch from gas to wood.
In the long term, however, according to the managing director of the German Energy and Pellet Association (DEPV),
Martin Bentele
, sufficient wood residues should be available: "Wood is a renewable and domestic raw material, the stock of which is higher in German forests than in any other EU Lan, says Bentele.
The massive increase in demand for wood pellets could lead to another problem: "If pellets are made from waste products in the sawmills, that's fine. But not if whole tree trunks are processed directly into pellets," says
Stefan Materne
from the energy team at the consumer center
.
If pellets are no longer just made from sawdust during wood processing, but are delivered to Germany from overseas or valuable logs are processed directly into pellets, then the climate balance and the reputation of pellets as a sustainable energy source will suffer.
When buying pellets, consumers should therefore not only pay attention to the price, but also to the origin of the fuel.