Most of the heat from a fireplace goes up the flue unfortunately. It’s one of the least efficient heating sources per the dept of energy (~15% efficient). A low tech solution is more thermal mass perhaps in high performance dwellings.
Wood burning furnaces are a challenge because homeowners insurance providers don’t want to insure dwellings that use them (but will if certain conditions are met, such as it not being the primary hearing source, professionally installed, etc).
Wood stoves are really efficient these days, hitting 70% plus, and it's Carbon Neutralish™ as a fuel source (obviously uses fossil fuels for harvest and transport and such, but that's only some percentage of the total)
I'm always amazed at the ability of our questionable 1990s wood stove to happily heat the entire house. It's a great backup heat source on days when it gets proper cold out, which is thankfully rare here.
> Most of the heat from a fireplace goes up the flue unfortunately.
Depends on the fireplace. Direct-vent gas fireplaces take outside air for combustion and then exhaust it, with no inside air being used in the process. There are also direct-vent wood stoves that can do the same.
Wood stoves can get about 85% combustion efficiency, but that's not heat-delivered efficiency (often 10-20% lower):
This is why very old homes have absolutely massive fireplaces in the center of the house - the huge size led to a massive thermal mass that would extract most of the heat from the circuitous smoke path inside.
The advantage of wood is you can burn it without any outside source of anything.
Wood burning furnaces are a challenge because homeowners insurance providers don’t want to insure dwellings that use them (but will if certain conditions are met, such as it not being the primary hearing source, professionally installed, etc).