This company is gathering pine needles from an invasive species, combining with sawdust and making briquettes as a replacement for coal.
briquettes
Free Heat for Your Home: Homemade Briquettes and Logs
Many people don’t have easy access to firewood or the tools and ability to cut, split, haul and stack it. Buying firewood may be out of your budget. Here we’ll present some virtually free ways of making fuel briquettes and logs at home with simple devices. To make briquettes/pellets/bricks/logs, you can use free materials such as newspapers, junk mail, cardboard, wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, leaves, pine needles, manure, rice hulls, straw, corn stover and other biomass fibers. The basic process usually involves soaking the materials and then compacting them with a press into blocks.