All-of-the-Above Energy Means Wood, Too
Delaware leaders—including Governor Matt Meyer—have increasingly embraced an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy. In his 2026 State of the State Address, Meyer called for Delaware to generate more power “of multiple types.” Five months later, WBOC reported that Meyer described his energy strategy as “all-of-the-above,” including solar, offshore wind, nuclear energy, battery storage, and other technologies.
But if we really mean all of the above, there is another energy resource Delaware already has in abundance—the OG green renewable energy source, but rarely talked about: wood.
And with Delaware generating less than half the electricity it consumes—and importing the natural gas that fuels most of the electricity it does generate—wood offers something different: a fuel source which Delaware already has.
Delaware has approximately 352,000 acres of forestland —about one-quarter of the state — and roughly 78% of it is privately owned.
According to the Delaware Forest Service’s Facts about Delaware’s Forests, these forests are renewable resources that can produce wood products while growing another generation of trees. Active management can also reduce excessive accumulations of dead wood and vegetation that increase wildfire risk. Delaware’s Forest Service even operates a Wildland Fire Program that trains firefighters and uses prescribed burns to reduce forest fuel loads.
Yet Delaware's forest-products industry has declined, leaving fewer markets for the wood our forests produce. Delaware's Statewide Forest Strategy identified an overabundance of low-quality hardwoods with limited demand and reports that Delmarva has less than half the number of sawmills it had 25 years earlier. Delaware's Forest Service reported that the state's forests contain a significant proportion of older, larger trees “prime for harvest,” along with an overabundance of low-value hardwoods that could support new mills and markets. The state's strategy calls for revitalizing the forest-products industry and identifies bioenergy as one potential market for low-value wood.
And Delaware has a substantial supply of lower-value wood available for an energy market.
A 2012 U.S. Forest Service study, the Greater Delaware Area Forest Biomass Resource Analysis, estimated that approximately 125,000 green tons of woody biomass could be available each year without depleting the resource—about 50,000 tons from Sussex County, 47,000 from Kent County, and 28,000 from New Castle County. Using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Assessing Your Renewable Energy Resources energy value for green wood chips, that amount represents roughly 1.1 trillion Btu of energy annually. That is the energy equivalent of the annual electricity used by approximately 25,000 Delaware households—about 6% of the households in the state. It is also roughly equal to the energy contained in all the distillate fuel oil used by Delaware's commercial sector in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Other states have already put this concept into practice, particularly in schools and other public buildings.
The U.S. Forest Service operated a Fuels for Schools and Beyond program from 2001 to 2009 with projects in states including Montana and Pennsylvania. Vermont has used wood heat in its public schools for about four decades, and today 1 in 6 Vermont public-school students attends a school heated with wood. In June 2026, Vermont announced a new Advanced Wood Heating Assistance program offering grants for systems using locally sourced cordwood, wood chips, and pellets. Even more relevant to Delaware, New York's North Country School uses wood from its own managed woodlot to help heat its campus.
Delaware already has a potential test case: Indian River School District’s 170 forested acres at Ingram Pond.
With its forest-management plan currently being updated, the district has an opportunity to examine whether wood from the property could be used for heat, as schools in other states have already demonstrated with managed forestland. Wood heat can reduce electricity demand even when it does not generate electricity: where wood heats a school or large facility that otherwise relies on electricity, it reduces demand on the grid and leaves that electricity available for other uses.
PJM recognizes biomass—including wood—as a fuel for generating electricity.
At the September 9, 2026 Delaware Municipal Electric Corporation's (DEMEC) Annual Dinner, guest speaker Michael Bryson, Senior Vice President of Operations for PJM confirmed that biomass is already used to generate electricity in other states. PJM’s Learning Center identifies biomass—including scrap wood—and wood waste such as wood chips as fuels that can be used to produce electricity. Bryson cautioned, however, that building a new power plant specifically to convert biomass into electricity can be expensive and may make more sense where wood waste is already produced as a byproduct of an existing business, such as a lumber mill.
Wood energy could help rebuild Delaware’s forest-products industry while creating a new market for its wood.
If wood energy is most economical when paired with an existing forest-products business, developing new markets for Delaware wood could work both ways—supporting the return or expansion of forest-products businesses while creating sources of wood byproducts for energy. The Delaware's Forest Service 2020 National Priorities Addendum reported that the state has “ample wood available for bioenergy projects that would greatly improve forest health.”
Delaware needs to determine whether its incinerator law is preventing wood energy from being considered—and remove that barrier if it is.
Wood heat, biomass power, and other modern wood-energy applications should not be excluded simply because they may fall under regulations intended for solid-waste incineration.
Delaware’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards Act (REPSA), 26 Del. C. § 352(8)(h), recognizes sustainably harvested biomass as renewable energy, yet the state’s incinerator law may stand in the way of using it. This law, 7 Del. C. § 6003(c)(2)(b), restricts incinerators to locations at least three miles from residences, residential communities, churches, schools, parks, and hospitals, creating uncertainty over whether clean wood used in a modern institutional energy system could be caught up in regulations intended for solid-waste incinerators. The Delaware Forest Service’s 2020 National Priorities Addendum reported disagreement over whether forestry-operation byproducts are considered solid waste and concluded that, despite ample wood available for bioenergy projects, “we cannot proceed with the implementation of an operation until the law is amended or changed.”
Delaware has already made this distinction for sawmills: in 2023, Senate Bill 30 amended state law to exclude from the definition of an incinerator the burning at a sawmill of unadulterated sawdust, wood shavings, bark, woodchips, slabs, edgings, and trim blocks produced by that sawmill. The question is whether that distinction should be clarified more broadly so other modern wood-energy applications can be considered.
A wood-energy market could also help keep Delaware's forests as forests.
According to DNREC’s Emissions Reduction: Forests and Urban Trees, Delaware is losing more than 1,000 acres of forest each year to development. The Delaware Forest Service's 2020 Delaware Forest Resource Assessment found that nearly all forest loss since 1986 occurred in Sussex County, which lost more than 36,000 acres. Creating economically viable markets for wood gives private landowners another reason to keep their land as working forests rather than sell it for development.
A forest that is managed, harvested, and regenerated can remain a forest. A forest converted to a subdivision cannot.
For Delaware, wood energy could be a win-win-win.
It could provide another locally available, renewable energy source, create a new market for lower-value wood and support Delaware's forest-products industry, and help keep privately owned forestland from being lost to development.
Delaware lawmakers should make sure the state's laws allow every practical energy source—including wood—to be considered. Delaware lawmakers say they want an all-of-the-above approach to energy. That should include natural gas, propane, nuclear power, and renewable energy like wood that Delaware already has. Other states have demonstrated that modern wood energy can work, and Delaware has both the forest resource and the potential to develop a stronger forest-products industry around it. Lawmakers should determine whether Delaware's incinerator law is unintentionally preventing wood energy from being considered and, if so, fix it.
If Delaware really means “all of the above,” wood belongs in the conversation.
Lawmakers should amend or repeal the incinerator restrictions that stand in its way.
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