Homeowners who use heating oil seek alternatives

Mark Bancroft is already counting his savings from a European-made wood pellet furnace he’s buying to replace the oil furnace in his home.

Bancroft burns about 1,100 gallons of heating oil a year, which would cost him about $5,000 at today’s record-high prices. With pellets, he expects to use about 8 tons at $250 a ton this coming winter, giving him a savings of $3,000 a year.

As heating oil approaches $5 a gallon, consumers in the oil-reliant Northeast are looking at pellets, heat pumps, firewood and even geothermal systems to soften the blow of high oil prices — which have almost doubled in the past year and gone up nearly fivefold since 2003.

Boston