The State of Vermont has info on "biomass" many schools in Vt are heated now with woodchips. The place you want to start looking is on the Forstry divisons website they publish a monthly bulletin and it has a place to order a lot of detailed info on wood and woodchip burning.
New Hampshire has several new large biomass power stations beeing built creating huge markets for wood waste.
I personally installed a central wood furnace and am totally happy with it and I have an option to burn coal(anthricite), which is nothing like bituminious with no smoke and very low sulpher contenet .
I opted out on an outside wood boiler because what they dont tell you is they burn almost twice as much as a furnace or stove and are prone to corrosion from wet wood smoke(friend owns welding shop)
I once saw a fellow burn woodchips in a (3/8" x 1.5" x 2") from a sawmill in an oldfashion box stove by injecting forced air with a bathroom exhaust fan for a few minutes to get it burning and it worked .
Burning chips is the real deal but you need to be equiped to do it. Pellet stoves,corn stoves etc. are basicly same idea just adapted to different characteristics of material burnt.