Maine has a lot of trees and a lot of people who can’t afford firewood to heat their homes. It’s not always easy to connect the two.
Groups of Mainers are trying to do just that by opening volunteer-run “wood banks” that operate like food pantries by offering free firewood to people as temporary fuel assistance.
While such wood banks have existed for years, more are popping up along the coast as Maine households rely on wood heat amid rising energy costs, limited assistance programs, high rural poverty rates and old housing stock.
Starting and operating a wood bank can be expensive and time-consuming in a period when service groups everywhere struggle to find volunteers and raise funds. One answer to that is a new network that shares costs and resources.
If the Maine Wood Bank Network reaches its goals, it will meet a clear statewide need for help to heat homes.
“We could be fully managing the resources where our communities are,” said Rebecca Rundquist, who leads the Cumberland Wood Bank and helped start the network. “This should be more of a part of our infrastructure.”
Existing woodbanks have given away up to 190 cords a year, typically starting out at around 20 or 30, founders said. An average-sized house might go through five or six cords in a winter.
About 10 percent of Maine households, or nearly 56,000 homes, use wood as their main source of heat, according to a study the quasi-state energy agency EfficiencyMaine released this year. That’s up from 4 percent in 2015. Twenty-one percent of homes burn wood as a backup source of heat, the same study found.
The state’s low-income heating assistance program, which more than 41,000 households used to help purchase fuel last winter, has limited funds that come from the federal government. More than 156,000 Mainers were eligible last year, according to MaineHousing, the quasi-state agency that administers it.
The state isn’t alone in figures like these, and more wood banks have been opening nationwide.
The number of them grew from at least 65 in 2016 to 153 in 2023, according to the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit that administers operating grants to wood banks for the U.S. Forest Service.
The real numbers could be much higher because many banks are small, local and don’t have online presences, the alliance said.
Setting up a new wood bank is equivalent to starting a business, including the work and considerations that come with it, according to Bob MacGregor, who led the Waldo County Woodshed’s creation in 2014.
He cautioned against duplicating efforts by starting many small neighboring wood banks, and believes the solution is larger, regional ones.
The woodshed, for example, serves about 40 towns in Waldo and Knox counties. When people in neighboring towns asked for advice to start their own, he advised them to join the woodshed instead. That wood bank purchases wood, stores it at a central site in Searsmont and distributes it to pick-up sites.
Cumberland’s wood bank, one of Maine’s oldest, began when church members bought and delivered firewood for neighbors who were burning furniture and cabinets to keep warm. Today, it also sells some wood to earn back costs.
Rebecca Rundquist, who helped start the statewide network and has directed the Cumberland bank since 2021, got involved after noticing how many trees taken down from private or town-owned property ended up turned into wood chips at her town’s transfer station.
She’d like to see wood felled locally be put to use as fuel in local homes with support from municipalities and the network. Currently, much volunteer time goes into administrative work, something the network model reduces with a “wood bank in a box” that includes a task checklist, legal advice, a website template, an opportunity for sharing equipment and potentially an insurance policy sign-on.
Rundquist said different models will work for different communities, and the idea is designed to be modified.
For example, a wood bank could be located at a transfer station to make better use of locally harvested wood, and receive town funding like other social services do.
Local tree wardens, which Maine law requires towns to appoint if they don’t have conservation commissions, could help evaluate wood for use as fuel too, Rundquist said. Maine once had a statewide “utilization forester” helping people use trees for energy, a role she said could benefit wood banks if it returned.
As a combined network, participants could also apply for larger grants to cover costs. The Waldo County Woodshed needs $60,000-$70,000 to operate annually, some of which comes from neighboring town budgets along with donors, MacGregor said. When the Cumberland bank gets publicity, it’s flooded with requests, but not more funding.
The 63 towns the network believes are strong wood bank candidates span the state, based on federal data of reliance on wood heat and the amount of income that residents spend on heating. That data doesn’t include renters.
Currently, nine of the 11 known Maine wood banks are located along the coast, from Cumberland to Surry. Two operate in inland Washington County.
Neither MacGregor nor Rundquist can say for sure why this coastal pattern has formed. Both have heard from people further inland who want to start banks themselves, though none have gotten off the ground yet.
Members of the network hope starting more wood banks will help people heat their homes and bring local participants together in a new way.
“It isn’t just delivering firewood to people,” Rundquist said. It’s about people coming together, building a local community and being part of it.
