California is facing a growing forest and wildfire crisis. To address this, the state has established a goal to ecologically thin at least 1 million, and ideally over 2 million, forested acres per year.

The biggest obstacle to this goal is: cost. If it costs $3,000 to treat one acre, the state needs up to $6 billion every year for the next two decades, purely for forest treatments. This amount is equal to the state’s entire natural resources budget in some years – conflicting with expanding needs on drought, flood, extreme heat, sea-level rise and more. It is simply not possible to address California’s wildfire crisis with public money alone.

One potential solution is to collect and convert the small-diameter residues that are the by-product of thinning operations into valuable products, such as hydrogen. This can offset the cost of forest treatments while driving rural and tribal economic development. The strategy is favorable as, without intervention, the residues are typically piled and burned or left to decompose, causing carbon and air pollution.

Over a number of years we have developed and continue to push forward a suite of policies to enable a sustainable, non-combustion, wood waste bioeconomy in California. This includes strategies to address critical issues including feedstock contracting on public lands as well as recurring revenue incentives for products such as hydrogen and carbon removal. We led the establishment of multiple flagship state programs and co-hosted the state’s inaugural California Biomass Workshop in January 2024.

For more information, contact Amanda DeMarco (amanda@csgcalifornia.com) or Sam Uden (sam@csgcalifornia.com).