Won't happen, what could happen though is emission regulations become so stringent that it's nearly impossible to build a certifiable stove.
What will happen is municipalities will create bans on a local level, forcing changeout programs, bans on new installs, or outright bans on burning in its entirety. It's already happening here in Canada, particularly in British Columbia. The new regulations for wood stoves are often criticized because the 2.5gr/hr emission limits for new stoves don't match real world PM numbers in areas with many of these stoves operating. Obviously wet wood and improper burning practices are partly to blame, but the legitimacy of the current EPA testing is also being called into question. Much light was also shed on this when Fairbanks started to examine the certifications for woodstoves and found many "irregularities" in the documentation.
I believe there is a point at which this reaches critical mass, when enough municipalities begin to ban wood heating that others will follow suit with little of their own research and no public consultation. At that point wood heating is doomed and it will take a very long time to regain acceptance, if it ever does.
There are advocates at this very time advocating for a ban on wood heating. It's a conversation that will be had regardless of how we as wood burners feel, we just need to make sure that conversation isn't one sided and is based on factual evidence. We also need to acknowledge that improvement is yet possible, and that the current standards and testing methods leave a lot to be desired and don't always translate into real world emissions reductions.
I was actually having this conversation with my grandfather a few weeks ago, sharing how much wood stoves had improved in terms of emissions and how much cleaner they burn. As he stated that's all fine and dandy when only a small percentage of the residents of our city burn on a full time basis, but what would happen if everyone installed a wood stove and burnt full time? What would air quality do then, I bet you'd be asking for everyone to go back to natural gas? I have to agree that he is right.
There is nothing wrong with the method (s).
Fairbanks was coached by another agency that identified issues in test reports.
Fairbanks has a Serious Non Attainment area that is mostly the community of North Pole. The lack of any air movement complicates the issue.
I have been keenly involved in the promulgation of the 2015 NSPS. I also was one of 5 manufacturers involved in Federally conducted steering committees for the development of ASTM 3053, an ATM granted by EPA to test with cordwood. You know who else was involved, State regulators including Alaska.
Back in 2010 a WA state regulatory ask "I wonder what the emissions are on cordwood". Arizona, Minnesota, Oregon, Idaho an most of the New England states made the same inquiry.
You can read our comments filed in public record as to the difficulty, confusion in the market place cordwood testing would result in...if approved.
We suggested that the least amount of variability is method 28, now 28R. We also suggested that mfgs should be required to do one run, with no influence on overall gr/h, assigned randomly by EPA using cordwood.
That didn't happen. So we have two viable methods, one with a higher degree of repeatability and allowing consumers to compare a stoves performance to another stoves performance.
The other method, the one that states are highly critical of, the same one they participated in the development, has much higher degrees of variability and won't allow for the above mentioned comparisons.
Back in September, a small task for that I was party to, plus industry, test labs and EPA, came up with very significant suggestions to improve ASTM 3053.
Last week, EPA rescinded the ATM cordwood method. 93 of the 152 wood heaters were tested to the method. EPA will make an announcement in January as to their findings and publish those in the Federal Register.
Again, no problem with the method or improvements, just always going to be variability.
