In 2021, the Forest Health Research Program, administered by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), awarded California Climate Investments funding to Micah Elias and Blue Forest, whose objective was to determine how to leverage existing carbon incentives to increase utilization of woody biomass residues. The project, which seeks to increase biomass utilization throughout the state, examines the return on investment for a variety of low-value forest products for which the market is unpredictable or simply doesn’t exist. Project leaders hope that the research unveils opportunities to move high-volume, low-value biomass in a way that generates revenue or cost savings as well as carbon benefits.
Micah Elias. Photo courtesy of Micah Elias.
Welcome, Dr. Elias! Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you’re working on and how you started working in this space?
My name is Micah Elias. While doing this project, I was finishing my PhD as a candidate at UC Berkeley. I worked on the project in partnership with and guidance from partners at Blue Forest, where I currently work as the Director of Natural Capital.
Tell us about the community contributing to your work. What are some of its strengths? What are some of its greatest needs?
In relation to this project, I would say the community is the large group of people working to increase biomass utilization throughout the state. Biomass utilization, in this case, refers to low-value material that either doesn’t have a market or has an unpredictable market. This community consists of everything from academics to practitioners, investors, land managers, agencies, and carbon market experts.
It’s a broad community—like the center bubble of a Venn diagram of many other bubbles. Few people are fully dedicated only to biomass utilization, but there are many actors with different expertise involved in different parts of the biomass utilization puzzle.
The community’s strengths lie in its strong consensus that something needs to be done about biomass to enable increased pace and scale etc. We need to find either cost-saving or revenue-generating ways to utilize it. The challenge has been operationalizing these solutions. Moving what is a high-volume, low-value product is really challenging. I’d say the community’s greatest need is figuring out how to mobilize the material, get it out of the woods and to high value-added end uses while also creating opportunities to bring production or products like biochar into the woods near the biomass.
We would love to hear more about the project. What does it seek to accomplish? What kinds of benefits does it provide?
This is a research project that examines the return on investment for a range of different products that can be made from low-value biomass. The need it addresses is that, although we know there’s an enormous amount of low value forest biomass out there, there wasn’t an explicit examination of the investment potential for these products before.
The project’s main goal is to act as a call to action for investors, showing that investment in forest biomass utilization can be profitable. It also highlights the substantial carbon benefits and a range of incentives already in place to support biomass utilization. Essentially, this research is meant to give teeth to the argument for investing in this space and to facilitate scaling up restoration efforts.
An industrial woodchipper processes felled low-value trees into chips, forming a pile as a part of a fuels reduction treatment in the Tahoe National Forest, July 2021. Photo courtesy of Blue Forest.
What impacts do you hope to see as a result of this project?
More companies and scaling of existing companies that are successfully utilizing biomass for anything other than pile burning.
What has been challenging in carrying out the project, and what have you learned from those challenges that could be useful for others to know?
The biggest challenge with this kind of economic valuation is the limitations of the techno-economic analyses that exist. That is, finding good business and production numbers for the types of companies that would utilize this material. Understandably, private companies rarely want to share their capital and operational budgets with researchers. They have a clear incentive to keep those private. But in order to do this kind of research, you have to have access to those numbers, so finding partners willing to share those data or building publicly accessible techno-economic analysis into the research is critical. The life-cycle analysis component is challenging but very doable. The economic analysis, however, is hard.
There’s also a tension between conducting broad, landscape-level analyses—like this one—and honing in on specific production technologies. I can imagine each technology highlighted in this research becoming its own project. Spending more time on the ground with experts who understand the ins and outs of these companies would allow for much more detailed and accurate return-on-investment assessments.
What are some elements of the project you think others should consider incorporating into their projects?
I think the best way to build off of this type of research is focusing not simply on the potential amount of revenue that can be generated by these companies, but also the cost savings associated with doing anything with the biomass. For example, if you can save $1,000 per acre because you don’t need to come back two years later and pile burn the material, but instead someone else can take it, then those savings can functionally subsidize the companies up to $1,000 per acre.
So much of the literature has focused on revenue generation, which is great, but if companies can come out in the woods and get biomass for free instead of paying $100 a ton, that subsidizes the company. Those subsidies end up saving the federal government money. I think that is a huge research opportunity.
What advice do you have for others applying for funds? What have you learned from the application process that would be useful for others to know?
As with any grant, it’s helpful to talk with the team overseeing the funding to understand what’s in scope and what isn’t. Knowing whether your idea generally fits the purpose of the funds makes the process much easier.
Who is involved in bringing the project to life? How are fellow community members involved?
The folks that helped bring this project to life were my advisor on this project, Dr. Dan Sanchez at UC Berkeley, and my coauthors Bodie Cabiyo, John Dees, and Phil Saksa.
Partners at Cal Fire and Forest Service helped by sharing insights about the needs for biomass utilization research. My colleagues at Blue Forest, including Luke Carpenter and Zack Knight, played a critical role in turning this academic research into the California Wildfire Innovation Fund, which is directly supporting the development of related wood utilization solutions.
What’s next for the project or for your community? What do you hope to build on for future improvements?
From a research standpoint, I’d like to focus on a broader range of products, especially biochar, which has enormous potential. But we need to change the conversation around biochar to focus on high-value products, like substituting it for coal in steelmaking or incorporating it into lithium-ion battery production.
Additionally, I’m excited about quantifying the cost-saving potential of biomass utilization. For instance, if the Forest Service is currently spending $2,000 or $3,000 per acre, some portion of that is for dealing with non-merchantable biomass. If we can quantify the cost saving potential of utilizing that biomass? That would go a long way to facilitate contractors writing biomass utilization into Stewardship Agreements and help with long-term contracts for feedstocks, which is really what’s needed for the industry to grow.
Thank you for sharing with us about your important work! Are there any closing thoughts you’d like to leave us with?
If anyone is interested in collaborating on these types of projects, we’re always looking for partners, especially in biomass utilization.