Wood was the primary fuel for residential, commercial, and transportation uses.

Kerosene and fuel oil began displacing wood for some commercial, transportation, and residential uses.

Electricity and natural gas heat in homes and commercial buildings.

Higher oil and gas prices and oil embargoes hit the country at the time that wood consumption for energy was at an all-time low of roughly 50 million tons per year.

The oil crises of 1973-74 prompted significant increases in woodstove sales for residential use. The paper and pulp industry also began to install wood and black liquor boilers for steam and power displacing fuel oil and coal.

PURPA guaranteed nonutility generators a market to sell power by mandating that utilities pay þavoided costþ rates for any power supplied by a qualifying facility.

Burlington Electric (Burlington, 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

The Californian biomass power industry began to grow, eventually adding 850 megawatts of power due to fuel cost escalation clauses in the Standard Offer #4 contracts which were based on predicted oil costs of $100 a barrel. These 10-year contracts guaranteed power purchase rates.

Pilot direct wood-fired gas turbine plants were tried for the first time by Canadian Solifuels, Inc. (in Canada) and Aerospace Research Corporation (in the United States).

Electricity generating capacity 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 plants.

The industry overbuilt capacity, with little regard for supply limitations, resulting in escalating feedstock prices as the last of the Standard Offer #4 contract power plants came on line. New ources of biomass eventually reduced costs to an average of $35 per dry ton.

Successful operation of several biomass gasification tests identified hot gas cleanup as key to widespread adoption of the technology. Promising high efficiencies were achieved

As of the end of August 1995, 15 biomass power plants (500 megawatts) had been closed through sales or buyout of their Standard Offer #4 agreements, primarily as a cost reduction strategy by the local utilities required to buy the power, which had sometimes risen to more than 10 cents per kilowatthour, depending on the contract.

With increasing gas prices, lots of research has been conducted on ways to reduce foreign dependence on oil (which are now accounting for around 60% of US imports). [or something to this effect]