In the 1980s, I heated my home in South Carolina with a heat pump, which was noisy, expensive, and inadequate to the task.
In the 1990s, when I moved to Vermont, I heated with wood, which was dirty, labor-intensive, and barely adequate if I stayed up all night tending fires.
When forced by medical issues to change, I determined that fuel oil was the best alternative. It still is, and I also save by using it to heat water.
Research into (so-called) cold-climate heat pumps shows that unless one has a heat sink such as a couple of acres of ground or a lake, they won’t do even half the job of heating here in the Northeast Kingdom.
Since wood heat creates even more CO2 than oil, and is looked on kindly by the Legislature, I can only conclude that the Affordable Heat Act is intended only to punish fossil fuel users and suppliers.
Brian Pickering
Canaan
