Greg Kesich’s “The View From Here” column (March 6) makes the excellent moral case for “Renewable energy best way to fight Putin.”
The editorial begs for follow-up commentary: what can we do now, here in Maine? We are not only the most forested state in the nation; we also have a well-developed infrastructure for modern wood heating, with four wood pellet manufacturing plants, from Ashland to Sanford, and in Bethel the U.S. assembler and distributor of one of Europe’s foremost lines of pellet heating equipment.

Thanks in large part to Maine’s congressional delegation, governor, and our legislators, there is now a 26 percent federal tax rebate for installing modern wood heating equipment and an Efficiency Maine incentive of up to $5,000 for such equipment. The most recent (Feb. 28) fuel prices listed by our Governor’s Energy Office comparing per BTU fuel costs show wood heating pellets at 80 percent – the average price for natural gas, 60 percent the cost of heating oil, and 40 percent the cost of propane. In addition, wood pellet prices are far less volatile than those of other fuels.

Thanks to our state’s excellent sustainable forestry practices, modern wood heating with Maine-made pellets immediately cuts carbon emissions by more than 50 percent, as documented in a peer-reviewed published study by Dr. John Gunn, often a critic of biomass energy generation.

Converting to more heating with wood pellets will be a Maine statement to a warmongering dictator, save fuel dollars, reduce carbon emissions, and create more forest sector jobs in our state.