IMHO any Pellet maker worth its salt has its own chipper,hammer mill, drum dryer, and gravity separator. They dont really "need" to buy sawdust, they can pound out there own from raw lumber. This isn't really what we all want I think, its much more inviting to think we are burning a waste material that would have few other places to go. I think one one hand you have to look at it as total economics and a relatively young industry. If wood based materials go up, someone somewhere will work out a system for pelletizing something else (be it switch grass, lawn clippings, leaves, peanut shells, ect. ect.). Innovation in power and industry comes when the price of something exceed what any market can afford. Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on alcohol, Rudolph Diesel's first engines ran on peanut and soy biodeisel. Discovery of large supplies of easy to access crude oil in the southwest squashed those technologies and we are just now looking to reclaim and mass produce those fuels. Honestly, who would be burning pellets or wood or anything else if oil or propane was $1.00 a gallon. Factor into that the devaluation of the U.S. $$ and you have some increase in cost. Pellet, and wood sometimes has to be about something other than the $$. The pioneers of the industry lost their shirts until the cost of Oil exceeded that of pellet. They just wanted to be "green", and to some degree support a local fuel industry. Even if you only save $1 a year you still get to support someone local for your fuel. How neat is that. If the USA really wants to lead then you have to take the risk. Anyone do a tally on how many tons of pellets from North America made their way to Europe?? I bet its a lot. So there you have the old "Supply and Demand" again. Pellet technologies require something from the GOV'T, thats for sure and its slow in coming but let us not get discouraged. And BTW, I still expect pellets to get cheaper in the spring than they are now. Maybe not cheaper than last spring though.
