Heat by the Bushel
New co-ops supplying
members with corn for
home-heating fuel
By Stephen Thompson, Assistant Editor
stephenathompson@wdc.usda.gov
hen most people think of corn,
they don’t usually think of
burning it as a fuel. But that’s
exactly what some urban energy
pioneers are doing in and around
Maryland.
Farmers have known for years that dry feed
corn makes a good heating fuel. Years ago, they
began building and modifying stoves to burn it as
a convenient source of heat, both for animal
enclosures and in their own homes. After all, why
pay someone to truck in heating gas when you
can save money using something you already
have on the farm?
Heating with corn in cities and suburbs is a
much newer phenomenon. The incentive is twofold:
First, many people have been looking for
ways to reduce their “carbon footprint” — the
amount of carbon dioxide their activities produce
and exhaust into the air. Second, they’d like to
save money on their heating bills.
Corn, it turns out, can not only heat your
house for less money than more conventional
means — such as natural gas, oil or electricity —
but can reduce carbon emissions as well. Pound
for pound, corn generates more heat energy than
wood, and like wood, it’s renewable.
For Jodi Beth McCain, the lower cost was
icing on the cake. McCain lives in suburban
Maryland, just outside the Washington, D.C.,
line. When she and her husband bought their
house, they were faced with the necessity of
upgrading its creaky, old forced-air heating
system.
Not only were they concerned with efficiency
and environmental impact, but, based on
experiences while living in Bolivia, they saw U.S.
dependency on oil as a source of international
conflict. Thus, they were looking for a
way to avoid using fossil fuel.
Buying a corn-burning stove wasn’t
difficult; the problem was how to obtain
the fuel. But McCain knew about Save
Our Skies, a cooperative based in
Takoma Park, Md., that provides
members with corn for home heating
fuel.
Co-op starts with four families
Save Our Skies was founded in 2002
by four families in the Takoma Park
area who were looking for a way to heat
their homes while minimizing their
carbon emissions. They began by
picking up their corn from a friendly
farmer an hour’s drive away in Mt. Airy,
Md.
The farmer is a Mennonite who uses
no-till farming methods and fertilizes
his crops with manure from his hogs
and poultry houses, instead of synthetic
fertilizers. It was the farmer who
suggested that the urban corn burners
erect a hopper bin near their homes to
serve as a central storage and
distribution point, which serves as the
drop-off point for deliveries by truck.
Fortunately, the Takoma Park
municipal government was sympathetic
to the new co-op. It not only allowed
the bin to be built on public land, but
helped out with permits and insurance,
saving the fledgling organization much
time and money.
Cash grants from the county and a
corn stove manufacturer helped pay for
erecting the bin. “It’s the world’s first
urban corn bin,” says Sat Jiwan Khalsa,
the co-op’s current president.
Today, more than 70 members
purchase corn from the Takoma Park
bin and from a new bin located 4.5
miles away in Mt. Rainier, Md. At least
half use their corn stoves as their
primary heat source; at least one
member has no other source of heat.
Baltimore Biomass
Meanwhile, an hour away in
Baltimore, another new cooperative,
Baltimore Biomass, is bringing corn
heat to that city. George Peters,
president of a nonprofit called
Sustainable Urban Infrastructures
(SUI), says that the organization was
looking for a project to encourage
“green” practices. “The point of our
organization is education,” he says.
SUI became interested in corn heat
after talking to members of the Takoma
Park co-op. Founded in 2008, under
SUI’s aegis, Baltimore Biomass has 21
members, but “Our membership has
been more than doubling every year,”
says Peters. At the current rate of
growth, he thinks SUI will soon be the
largest co-op of its sort in the area.
Peters sees big advantages from corn
heat: “It’s cheaper, it’s cleaner, it’s grown
in Maryland and we know the farmer.”
The nonprofit currently manages the
cooperative and shoulders the cost of
administration. Peters hopes that future
growth will make the cooperative selfsustaining.
While much of Save Our Skies’
recruitment comes by word of mouth,
Baltimore Biomass actively proselytizes
for the cause, with volunteers
dedicating three days a week to
outreach. The co-op is putting together
a “mobile classroom” designed to be
taken to gatherings such as festivals and
church fairs.
“If you can ensure us a crowd, we’re
happy to come out,” says Peters. “We’ll
tell you all about corn heating; we’ll
demonstrate how it works and how to
get started. And we don’t charge a fee.”
Both Peters and Khalsa stress the
economic advantages of corn heat.
“Typically, the cost of the stove and
installation will pay for itself in five to
ten years,” says Khalsa. “By contrast,
solar panels might take 25 years or
more.”
They also note that a federal tax
credit is available until the end of 2010
for the purchase of 75-percent efficient
biomass stoves. Depending on the cost
of the stove, buyers can get as much as
$1,500 back under this program.
Financing new bins
is a challenge
Unlike Save Our Skies, Baltimore
Biomass has no distribution bin as yet.
Instead, a truck makes deliveries to the
co-op’s headquarters, which is located
in an old, “re-purposed” industrial
building that houses a number of small
enterprises, including the Baltimore
Biodiesel Cooperative (see “Baltimore
Biodiesel” in the May/June 2008 issue
of this magazine).
Members must meet the truck to
pick up their fuel. The co-op has drawn
up plans to install two 20-ton grain
bins, but faces hurdles its Takoma Park
counterpart did not.
While the Takoma Park bin cost
only $7,000 to install – in part because
of a sympathetic attitude on the part of
municipal authorities — the Baltimore
co-op faces a steeper cost curve.
Building code and permit requirements
raise the estimated cost for two bins to
about $45,000.
“We’ve been looking for grant
money,” says Peters. “We got an
enthusiastic response from the
Maryland Grain Producers. But their
grants are more in the $5,000 range.”
Until a source of funds can be
located, the bins will remain on hold.
“We keep hoping that if we keep
asking, someone will say: ‘you’re adding
income to rural areas,’ and give us a
grant,” says Peters.
The Baltimore co-op’s members are
enthusiastic, despite the relative
inconvenience. “It’s terrific. I can’t say
enough about it,” says one member who
uses a corn stove to heat her small
business.
However, even under the best of
conditions, corn heat demands a level of
involvement that most consumers aren’t
used to.
“It’s definitely more complicated
than just turning on a thermostat,” says
McCain. Stoves, while fed by an
electric-powered internal auger, still
need to be filled and cleaned out
periodically.
McCain has a single corn stove that
keeps the entire house comfortable
most of the time during cold weather,
but keeps the old heating system as a
backup. “If it gets really cold, we’ll turn
on the old furnace,” she says.
The “gentle heat” of the stove,
which is located on the lowest floor,
circulates naturally through the house.
“It’s a much more comfortable heat
than forced-air.”
McCain says she loads the stove
every two days and cleans out the ash
pot every three or four days. She
vacuums out the stove every 10 to 14
days, which takes just minute or two.
Her husband makes a trip to the bin
every week in cold weather to pick up
fuel.
Self-serve system
The Save Our Skies co-op operates
on an honor system. The bins are selfserve:
the corn is measured in fivegallon
bucket loads, and members note
on a clipboard register how much they
have taken.
Members are required to pay $100 to
join and an additional $25 to renew
their memberships every two years.
They deposit money into their co-op
accounts, which are then debited as
they take fuel. Current price is $4 for
each bucket of fuel.
Billing and other housekeeping are
done by volunteers through an e-mail
list: periodic e-mails contain a
spreadsheet noting each member’s
current balance. The cooperative went
through 120 tons of corn in the winter
of 2008-09, with members typically
using from one to three tons.
The Takoma Park bin is located at
the end of a peaceful, tree-lined
residential street on municipal land
used for storing mulch. The Mount
Rainier bin has a place next to a
municipal fire station.
On both sites, the bin and a small
enclosure used to store measuring
buckets and the clipboard are kept
scrupulously clean. “We don’t want to
be accused of fostering vermin,” says
McCain.
Typically, members pick up their
corn in bags or buckets carried in the
trunks of their cars. Khalsa, however, is
serious about reducing carbon
emissions, and transports his corn home
on a bicycle modified to carry two fivegallon
buckets.
“I’ve talked to people who raise the
question of using food for fuel,” he says,
“But most corn is used to produce
meat, which is a very inefficient use of
resources. So I put the issue in the
context of heat use vs. meat use.”
