{"id":194386,"date":"2025-10-01T09:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T09:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/194386\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T09:31:13","slug":"california-needs-biomass-energy-its-projects-keep-going-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/194386\/","title":{"rendered":"California needs biomass energy. Its projects keep going South"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Arbor Energy<\/a> is, essentially, a poster child of the kind of biomass energy project California keeps saying it wants.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s goal is to reduce wildfire risk on 1 million acres of wildlands every year<\/a>, including by thinning overgrown forests, which is expected to generate roughly 10 million tons<\/a> of wood waste annually. Arbor hopes to take that waste, blast it through a \u201cvegetarian rocket engine\u201d to produce energy, then sequester all of the carbon the process would generate underground.<\/p>\n

California has billed Arbor \u2014 and the handful of other similarly aimed projects it\u2019s financed \u2014 as a win-win-win: wildfire mitigation, clean energy and carbon sequestration all in one.<\/p>\n

Yet, after Arbor initially won state financial backing for a pilot project in Placer County, the El Segundo-based company\u2019s California ambitions fell through, like many biomass projects before it.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s heading to Louisiana.<\/p>\n

California, biomass energy advocates say, has struggled to get past its distrust of the technology, given traditional biomass\u2019 checkered past of clear-cutting forests and polluting poorer communities. Further, the state\u2019s strict permitting requirements have given residents tremendous power to veto projects and created regulatory headaches.<\/p>\n

But many environmental groups argue it\u2019s an example of California\u2019s environmental and health protections actually working. If not done carefully, bioenergy projects run the risk of emitting carbon \u2014 not sequestering it \u2014 and polluting communities already grappling with some of the state\u2019s dirtiest air. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at biomass facilities across California \u2014 and we\u2019ve done Public Records Act requests to look at emissions, violations and exceedances … the reality is that we\u2019re not in some kind of idealized pen-and-paper drawing of what the equipment does,\u201d said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. \u201cIn the real world, there are just too many problems with failures and faults in the equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are simpler and safer uses for this wood waste, these critics say: fertilizer for agriculture, wood chips and mulch. It may not provide carbon-negative energy but comes with none of the risks of bioenergy projects, they say. <\/p>\n

For the record:<\/p>\n

11:51 a.m. Sept. 30, 2025A previous version of this story stated that the Center for Biological Diversity advocated for a wildfire approach involving only home hardening and evacuation planning. Its proposal also includes prescribed burning and defensible-space vegetation management.<\/p>\n

The Center for Biological Diversity and others advocate for a more \u201chands-off\u201d approach to California\u2019s forests and urge management of the wildfire crisis primarily through home hardening, evacuation planning, prescribed burning and defensible-space vegetation management. But fire and ecology experts say more than a century of fire suppression has made that unrealistic.<\/p>\n

However, the sweeping forest-thinning projects these experts say are needed will cost billions, and so the state needs every source of funding it can get. \u201cOur bottleneck right now is, how do we pay for treating a million acres a year?\u201d said Deputy Chief John McCarthy of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who oversees the agency\u2019s wood products and bioenergy program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In theory, the class of next-generation biomass energy proposals popping up across California could help fund this work.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia has an incredible opportunity,\u201d said Arbor chief executive and co-founder Brad Hartwig. With the state\u2019s leftover biomass from forest thinning, \u201cwe could make it basically the leader in carbon removal in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of wood with nowhere to go<\/p>\n

Biomass energy first took off<\/a> in California in the 1980s after small pioneering plants at sawmills and food-processing facilities proved successful and the state\u2019s utilities began offering favorable contracts for energy sources they deemed \u201crenewable\u201d \u2014 a category that included biomass. <\/p>\n

In the late \u201880s and early \u201890s, the state had more than 60 operating biomass plants<\/a>, providing up to 9%<\/a> of the state\u2019s residential power. Researchers estimate the industry supported about 60,000 acres of forest treatment to reduce wildfire risk per year at the time. But biomass energy\u2019s heyday was short-lived.<\/p>\n

In 1994, the California Public Utilities Commission shifted the state\u2019s emphasis away from creating a renewable and diverse energy mix and toward simply buying the cheapest possible power.<\/p>\n

Biomass \u2014 an inherently more expensive endeavor \u2014 struggled. Many plants took buyouts to shut down early. Despite California\u2019s repeated attempts to revitalize the industry<\/a>, the number of biomass plants continued to dwindle.<\/p>\n

Today, only 23 biomass plants<\/a> remain in operation, according to the industry advocate group California Biomass Energy Alliance. The state Energy Commission expects the number to continue declining because of aging infrastructure and a poor bioenergy market. California\u2019s forest and wildfire leadership are trying to change that.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom created a task force to address California\u2019s growing wildfire crisis. After convening the state\u2019s top wildfire and forest scientists, the task force quickly came to a daunting conclusion: The more than a century of fire suppression in California\u2019s forests \u2014 especially in the Sierra Nevada \u2014 had dramatically increased their density, providing fires with ample fuel to explode into raging beasts.<\/p>\n

To solve it, the state needed to rapidly remove that extra biomass on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres of wildlands every year through a combination of prescribed burns, rehabilitation of burned areas and mechanically thinning the forest.<\/p>\n

McCarthy estimated treating a single acre of land could cost $2,000 to $3,000. At a million acres a year, that\u2019s $2 billion to $3 billion annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is that going to come from?\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cGrants \u2014 maybe $200 million \u2026 10% of the whole thing. So, we need markets. We need some sort of way to pay for this stuff and in a nontraditional way.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy believes bioenergy is one of those ways \u2014 essentially, by selling the least valuable, borderline unusable vegetation from the forest floor. You can\u2019t build a house with pine cones, needles and twigs, but you can power a bioenergy plant.<\/p>\n

However, while biomass energy has surged in Southern states such as Georgia, projects in California have struggled to get off the ground.<\/p>\n

In 2022, a bid by Chevron, Microsoft and the oil-drilling technology company Schlumberger to revive a traditional biomass plant near Fresno and affix carbon capture to it fell through<\/a> after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requested the project withdraw its permit application. Environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity and residents in nearby Mendota opposed the project.<\/p>\n

This year, a sweeping effort supported by rural Northern California counties<\/a> to process more than 1 million tons of biomass a year into wood pellets and ship them to European bioenergy plants (with no carbon capture involved) in effect died after facing pushback from watch groups that feared the project, led by Golden State Natural Resources, would harm forests, and environmental justice groups that worried processing facilities at the Port of Stockton would worsen the air quality in one of the state\u2019s most polluted communities.<\/p>\n

Arbor believed its fate would be different. <\/p>\n

Bioenergy from the ground up<\/p>\n

Before founding Arbor, Hartwig served in the California Air National Guard for six years and on a Marin County search and rescue team. He now recalls a common refrain on the job: \u201cThere is no rescue in fire. It\u2019s all search,\u201d Hartwig said. \u201cIt\u2019s looking for bodies \u2014 not even bodies, it\u2019s teeth and bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, he started Arbor, with the idea of taking a different approach to bioenergy than the biomass plants shuttering across California.<\/p>\n

To understand Arbor\u2019s innovation, start with coal plants, which burn fossil fuels to heat up water and produce steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. Traditional biomass plants work essentially the same but replace coal with vegetation as the fuel. Typically, the smoke from the vegetation burning is simply released into the air. <\/p>\n

\"Pipes <\/p>\n

Small detail of the 16,000-pound proof-of-concept system being tested by Arbor that will burn biomass, capture carbon dioxide and generate electricity.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Arbor\u2019s solution is more like a tree-powered rocket engine.<\/p>\n

The company can utilize virtually any form of biomass, from wood to sticks to pine needles and brush. Arbor heats it to extreme temperatures and deprives it of enough oxygen to make the biomass fully combust. The organic waste separates into a flammable gas \u2014 made of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen \u2014 and a small amount of solid waste.<\/p>\n

The machine then combusts the gas at extreme temperatures and pressures, which then accelerates a turbine at much higher rates than typical biomass plants. The resulting carbon dioxide exhaust is then sequestered underground. <\/p>\n

Arbor portrays its solution as a flexible, carbon-negative and clean device: It can operate anywhere with a hookup for carbon sequestration. Multiple units can work together for extra power. All of the carbon in the trees and twigs the machine ingests ends up in the ground \u2014 not back in the air.<\/p>\n

But biomass watchdogs warn previous attempts at technology like Arbor\u2019s have fallen short.<\/p>\n

This biomass process creates a dry, flaky ash mainly composed of minerals \u2014 essentially everything in the original biomass that wasn\u2019t \u201cbio\u201d \u2014 that can include heavy metals that the dead plants sucked up from the air or soil. If agricultural or construction waste is used, it can include nasty chemicals from wood treatments and pesticides.<\/p>\n

Arbor plans \u2014 at least initially \u2014 on using woody biomass directly from the forest, which typically contains less of these dangerous ash chemicals.<\/p>\n

Turning wood waste into gas also generates a thick, black tar composed of volatile organic compounds \u2014 which are also common contaminants following wildfires<\/a>. The company says its gasification process uses high enough temperatures to break down the troublesome tar, but researchers say<\/a> tar is an inevitable byproduct of this process.<\/p>\n

\"Two <\/p>\n

Grant Niccum, left, Arbor lead systems engineer and Kevin Saboda, systems engineer, at the company\u2018s test site in San Bernardino. Biomass is fed into this component and then compressed to 100 times atmospheric pressure and burned to create a synthetic gas.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Watchdogs also caution that the math to determine whether bioenergy projects sequester or release carbon is complicated and finicky.<\/p>\n

\u201cBiomass is tricky, and there\u2019s a million exceptions to every rule that need to be accounted for,\u201d said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead with Frontier Climate<\/a>, which vets carbon capture projects such as Arbor\u2019s and connects them with companies interested in buying carbon credits. \u201cThere are examples where we have found a project that actually works on the carbon accounting math, but we didn\u2019t want to do it because it was touching Canadian boreal forest that\u2019s old-growth forest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frontier Climate, along with the company Isometric,<\/a> audits Arbor\u2019s technology and operations. However, critics note that because both companies ultimately support the sale of carbon credits, their assessments may be biased.<\/p>\n

At worst, biomass projects can decimate forests and release their stored carbon into the atmosphere. Arbor hopes, instead, to be a best-case scenario: improving \u2014 or at least maintaining \u2014 forest health and stuffing carbon underground.<\/p>\n

When it all goes South<\/p>\n

Arbor had initially planned to build a proof of concept in Placer County. To do it, Arbor won $2 million through McCarthy\u2019s Cal Fire program and $500,000 through a state Department of Conservation program<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

But as California fell into a deficit<\/a> in 2023, state funding dried up. <\/p>\n

So Arbor turned to private investors. In September 2024, Arbor reached an agreement with Microsoft in which the technology company would buy carbon credits backed by Arbor\u2019s sequestration. In July of this year, the company announced a $41-million deal<\/a> (well over 15 times the funding it ever received from California) with Frontier Climate, whose carbon credit buyers include Google, the online payment company Stripe and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook.<\/p>\n

To fulfill the credits, it would build its first commercial facility near Lake Charles, La., in part powering nearby data centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very excited about Arbor,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cThey pretty much walked away from their grant and said they\u2019re not going to do this in California. \u2026 We were disappointed in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for Arbor, relying on the state was no longer feasible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t rely on California for the money to develop the technology and deploy the initial systems,\u201d said Hartwig, standing in Arbor\u2019s plant-covered El Segundo office. \u201cFor a lot of reasons, it makes sense to go test the machine, improve the technology in the market elsewhere before we actually get to do deployments in California, which is a much more difficult permitting and regulatory environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two <\/p>\n

Rigger Arturo Hernandez, left, and systems engineer Kevin Saboda secure Arbor\u2019s proof-of-concept system in the company\u2019s San Bernardino test site after its journey from Arbor\u2019s headquarters in El Segundo. The steel frame was welded in Texas while the valves, tubing and other hardware were installed in El Segundo.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first next-generation biomass company based in California to build elsewhere. San Francisco-based Charm Industrial,<\/a> whose technology doesn\u2019t involve energy generation, began its sequestration efforts in the Midwest and plans to expand into Louisiana.<\/p>\n

The American South has less stringent logging and environmental regulations, which has led biomass energy projects to flock to the area: In 2024, about 2.3% of the South\u2019s energy came from woody biomass \u2014 up from 2% in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, that number on the West Coast was only 1.2%, continuing on its slow decline. <\/p>\n

And, unlike in the West, companies aiming to create wood pellets to ship abroad have proliferated in the South. In 2024, the U.S. produced more than 10.7 million tons<\/a> of biomass pellets; 82% of which was exported. That\u2019s up from virtually zero<\/a> in 2000. The vast majority of the biomass pellets produced last year \u2014 84% \u2014 was from the South. <\/p>\n

Watchdogs warn that this lack of guardrails has allowed the biomass industry to harm the South\u2019s forests, pollute poor communities living near biomass facilities and fall short of its climate claims.<\/p>\n

Over the last five years, Drax \u2014 a company that harvests and exports wood pellets and was working with Golden State Natural Resources \u2014 has had to pay<\/a> Louisiana and Mississippi a combined $5 million for violating air pollution laws. Residents living next to biomass plants, like Drax\u2019s, say the operations have worsened asthma<\/a> and routinely leave a film of dust<\/a> on their cars.<\/p>\n

But operating a traditional biomass facility or shipping wood pellets to Europe wasn\u2019t Arbor\u2019s founding goal \u2014 albeit powering data centers in the American South wasn\u2019t exactly either.<\/p>\n

Hartwig, who grew up in the Golden State, hopes Arbor\u2019s technology can someday return to California to help finance the solution for the wildfire crisis he spent so many years facing head-on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got an interest in Arkansas, in Texas, all the way up to Minnesota,\u201d Hartwig said. \u201cEventually, we\u2019d like to come back to California.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arbor Energy is, essentially, a poster child of the kind of biomass energy project California keeps saying it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[48545,6395,112843,112847,112846,112845,2356,34355,112844,3426,192,10070,1744,79,13109,112848,2394],"class_list":["post-194386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-acre","tag-air-quality","tag-arbor-energy","tag-biomass-energy","tag-biomass-facility","tag-biomass-plant","tag-california","tag-carbon","tag-clear-cutting-forest","tag-company","tag-environment","tag-fire","tag-project","tag-science","tag-state","tag-wildfire-risk","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}