It’s not just backyard barbecues and hotel showers the Environmental Protection Agency has its eye on. Now, the agency’s going after wood stoves.
The EPA recently finalized new regulations further limiting the amount of emissions home wood-fired stoves, heaters, furnaces and boilers.
This new update, the first since 1988, will be phased in over the next five years. While it does not affect wood stoves and heaters already installed in houses, it does mandate that manufacturers put only cleaner-burning models on the market.
One in ten American households burns wood, and an increasing number use it as their primary heating source, federal statistics show.
Low-income Americans especially rely on burning wood for heat, a U.S. News & World Report op-ed explained last year:
Wood stoves often serve as a form of insurance for low-income households in two ways. First, wood stoves are a reliable source of heat and energy when storms result in power outages. Because low-income customers are often the last group to have their electricity restored, wood stoves enable these families to heat their houses for the duration.
Second, because wood can often be obtained directly, especially for families living in rural areas, low-income households who experience income or job loss are able to produce energy and heat their houses with an alternate source that does not require the same level of cash flow as acquiring heat through a public utility.
The income and insurance they would lose in complying with this regulation may be better utilized toward mitigating other risks.
Some of the states with the highest usage rates are pushing back against the EPA, the Associated Press reported earlier this month:
Missouri and Michigan already have barred their environmental agencies from enforcing the EPA standards. Similar measures recently passed Virginia's legislature and are pending in at least three other states, even though residents in some places say the rules don't do enough to clear the air.
Then again, if state-level officials fail to act, the AP notes, federal ones might step in.
Still, after a cold, long winter, it’s no surprise many states don’t have the patience for yet more EPA overreach.