[uuidgen]

Good furnace produce little particulate emission so its almost on par with burning gas.

Biomass - so mostly wood, wicker or straw has all its carbon content coming from the air - they capture CO2 as they grow, when you burn them you release exactly the same amount of CO2, hence they're carbon-neutral.

[realreality]

They’re only carbon neutral if you replant what you’ve cut down.

[uuidgen]

But that's the idea behind the biomass burning.

If you just burn all the forests an be done with it it's a bad idea. But if you replant the forests with fast growing species you can cut them down every 5-10 years and have a lot of biomass to burn in basically a closed cycle.

[_y5hn]

The new species can be worse for the ecology than not planting. It's not that easy as just plant anything.

[throwaway485239]

You don't really have to replant -- coppice and pollard are out of fashion, but maybe they can come back.

Sprout Lands by William Bryant Logan is a fascinating read.