Wood was the primary fuel for heating and cooking in homes and businesses, and was used for steam in industries, trains, and boats.
1890 Coal had replaced much of the wood used in steam generation.
1900 Ethanol was competing with gasoline to be the fuel for cars.
1910 Most rural homes were still heated with wood. In towns, coal was displacing wood in homes.
1930 Over half of all Americans lived in cities in buildings heated by coal. Rural Americans still heated and cooked with wood. Diesel and gasoline were firmly established as the fuel for trucks and automobiles. Street cars ran on electricity. Railroads and boats used coal and diesel fuel.
1950 Electricity and natural gas had replaced wood heat in most homes and commercial buildings.
1974 Some Americans used more wood for heating because of higher energy costs. Some industries switched from coal to waste wood. The paper and pulp industry also began to install wood and black liquor boilers for steam and power, displacing fuel oil and coal.
1984 Burlington Electric (Vermont) built a 50-megawatt, wood-fired plant with electricity production as the primary purpose. This plant was the first of several built since 1984.
1989 Pilot trials of direct wood-fired gas turbine plants were conducted for the first time in Canada and in the United States.
1990 The capacity to generate electricity from biomass (not including municipal solid waste) reached 6 gigawatts. Of 190 biomass-fired, electricity-generating facilities, 184 were nonutility generators, mostly wood and paper.
1994 Successful operation of several biomass gasification tests identified hot gas cleanup as key to widespread adoption of the technology
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