This is one of those questions that is starting to be asked more and more about how environmentally friendly a pellet grill as compared to other smokers, especially wood smokers.
Now people are looking into the eco-planet cost of so many things, and that’s fair enough in my opinion. I’m no hippie, but I think consciously about my consumption.
Before I even got into pellet grills, quite a few years ago now, I was in the biomass pellet heating industry in Europe. When I started to learn more about the efficiency that can be had from burning pellets which does seem to have an impact on the environmental angle as well.
Is the Pellet Grill Environmentally Friendly?
When you compare the pellet grill to other smoking devices, the electricity consumption of a pellet grill is minimal. The fuel, wood pellets are generally made of waste wood. Therefore, pellet grills are an environmentally-friendly choice.
Of course, a pellet grill is an electronic machine which uses a nominal bit of power to feed the pellets and control the thermostat. But when you consider all compare other smoking options. The pellet grill is really using a very small amount of electricity.
I definitely am not one of those guys to is all on nothing and that you have to submit zero carbon the rest of your life. As mentioned, for me it’s about conscious consumption.
Pellet grills use such little power, you can run them off a basic car battery. Try and do that with a kitchen oven!
That’s why some pellet grills even come standard with a 12-volt car adapter, so they can be run off a small car battery directly or through the cigarette lighter.
When you compare that to electric smokers which will use generally about 800 W per hour (vs 60-100W for a pellet grill), the pellet grill is about equivalent to an old incandescent bulb it’s not very much.
Charcoal Compared to Pellet Grills
From what I’ve read about charcoal, in terms of extraction, then burning the fossil fuel and releasing the carbon – it some greenhouse emissions.
Pellet grills, on the other hand, are touted to be nearly carbon neutral since when a tree is grown it captures carbon dioxide. And then when you burn it and releases it back.
I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge that charcoal is considered one of the dirtiest fuels of the world and there is quite a push to get away from its baseload power.
Using Pellets Superior to Natural Gas (Scientific Link!)
I went through a fair bit of this scientific article below which is comparing natural gas, considered to be incredibly eco-friendly to the wood pellets. Now bear in mind that this article is quite focused on wood pellets for heating not for smoking food, but it does draw a comparison I think.
If you’re interested in the eco-friendly aspects of burning wood pellets, I couldn’t find a scientific study especially around pellet grills, so I drew some parallels (if you know of a source, feel free to contact me).
One of the key aspects of whether wood pellets are considered carbon-neutral is if the harvesting is happening slower than the planting, here is a quote from the scientific study I found.
These comparisons are based on an assumption that energy production from wood is carbon neutral, an assumption based on the premise that forests from which energy wood is harvested are adding wood volume more rapidly than the rate of wood removal.
Life Cycle Impacts of Heating with Wood in Scenarios Ranging from Home and Institutional Heating to Community Scale District Heating Systems
Pellet Grills Are Efficient
I think pellet grills are efficient based on how much they use per hour, it’s generally about half to a pound when doing low-temperature barbecue smoking. But it’s also the amount of ash that’s leftover, this was something a learned in the pellet heating industry, the efficiency of the combustion is related to how much ash it leftover.
When I did some of the energy auditing residentially and commercially, I got to figure out how much consumption people used for different appliances.
Now an oven which could actually be on for a very long time. When cooking a roast or chunk of meat or quite a few hours, can consume quite a lot of electricity.
The loads and fuel used when you have on a pellet grill on a low-temperature smoking/roasting cook is incredibly minimal in comparison.
Ash Left is Minimal
Most the time even after 6 to 10 hours of smoking pork or beef, you’d end up with less than a cup of ash, as mentioned.
Suggesting there is some efficiency going on with pellet grills.
Fossil Fuels vs Wood Pellets
When it comes to lighter fluids and other dirty crude oil-based products that are used for lighting charcoal (or wood). They have pretty much all been derived from things that aren’t good for the environment.
I think there is a move towards eco-lighter products but it’s still a long way off when these types of things are standard across smoking and low and slow groups that will be awesome.
Wood Pellets are Made of Unused Wood Milling – Waste Wood
I did a bit of research into the actual wood pellets and how they’re made. Most of the time, the good thing is that they are using waste to produce wood pellets.
They take the offcuts that generally aren’t going to be used for much and then they make those little wood pellets out of them.
Pellets Grills Need Electricity
The bottom line is you will need some electricity to run a pellet grill, but it is a minimal amount and will not have major impacts on the electrical network or power grids across the world.
It’s something most people don’t know, is that it’s not actually the amount of electricity, it’s the appliances and when they used which creates the most headaches for the power grids.
As you can imagine most people use quite a bit of power when they wake up. And then they use quite a bit of power when they come home from work.
These are what are deemed the peak loads and that’s what the networks generally struggle with the most. If there was more even distribution across a power network then they would have to handle the loads much more easily. When ovens and cooktops (especially electrical ones) are switched one, there is a surge which the whole system has to handle, or you know what happens – power outage (of course we are talking 1st world problems here).
It’s the same with solar power it’s produced at the time of the day during the peak sunshine hours when the UV is the strongest. But that’s not when people use power, in terms of residential consumption.
Are Pellet Grill Smokers Healthy?
I’m not going to get into technical detail because I’m not an expert, but I will give my opinion.
And I will just cover off on what I read, full disclaimer.
Charcoal / Wood Smoking do have more impurities in it that may have an effect on health. When you compare this to clean combusting woodfired pellet grills, the fire is burning cleanly and supposedly this has an impact as well on the quality of the smoke because it’s very consistent with any pellet grill – it called ‘thin blue smoke’ which is just about transparent, its when the right about of oxygen is burning the wood and its clean combustion.
If you want to feel like you’re making a super eco-conscious decision, then the pellet grill might be a satisfying option for you. A pellet grill runs off compressed pellets of scrap wood or sawdust that are normally thrown away. This seemingly renewable resource is carbon neutral because the emissions produced by burning the pellets equal the amount that is absorbed when growing the trees in the first place. What makes pellets even more Earth-friendly is the fact that they do not contain the additives that make charcoal smoke harmful
https://www.saveonenergy.com/learning-center/post/green-grilling/
So to sum it up that’s pretty much the way I perceive the whole pellet grill side of things & how environmentally friendly it is.
I have to say I really don’t do much charcoal smoking anymore. I think I have learned too much about the BOCs. Which are all the bad chemicals that are released and their carcinogenic effects, so it’s really not worth it anymore.
The problem is there’s a huge cultural barbecue charcoal thing going on, and yes it does have a certain flavor that people get a bit hooked on.
And I definitely think that if you have 100 either kitchen ovens or charcoal smokers. Compared to hundred pellet grills, the pellet grills would be producing less emissions, running at more efficiently and likely to be a healthier option.
And this will take a long time to educate, and my thoughts are probably that unless legislation is changed and people have no choice but to look at other options been they will just continue doing what they’re doing.
