Depending on the wood fuel used (wood chip or wood pellet usually) and the fossil fuel available in your region, there can be significant savings by opting for biomass.
Wood pellets are more expensive than wood chips as fossil fuels are used in the manufacturing process and so the price traces any cost changes to gas and oil, to some extent. Pellets (at 8% moisture content) typically provide 1 kilowatt hour of heat for £0.04375 (4.375p/KwH) and chip (at 35% moisture content) is around £0.034 (3.4p/kWh).
LPG is almost double the wood chip cost per kilowatt hour at 6.4pence, domestic heating oil equates to 3.9p and electricity is at a whopping 12p! The financial benefits to heating your property with renewable biomass wood fuel are clear for anyone off gas!
Compared to domestic mains gas at 4p/kWh, biomass is still quite competitive. Commercial mains gas at 3.2p/kWh is still comparable with wood chip costs if extremely dry (50%) which is only 2.4p/kWh.
* Figures supplied by Forest Fuels and correct at time of publishing (May 2015).
