BIOMASS UTILIZATION

Across the Eastern Sierra, tribes, local governments, utilities, nonprofits, businesses, and agencies have been working on biomass-related efforts for years, often independently. While we’ve made progress through grant-funded studies, forest restoration projects, and infrastructure planning, biomass remains a key missing link for implementing wildfire mitigation and forest health work at scale. Without a more connected, coordinated approach, biomass will remain a bottleneck for resilience work.

The Eastern Sierra Council of Governments (ESCOG), in coordination with the Eastern Sierra Wildfire Alliance, is leading a regional planning effort to align current biomass initiatives, identify system gaps, and explore governance and funding models to support long-term solutions. The process is being facilitated in partnership with biomass expert Christiana Darlington of CLERE Inc., through a subgrant from the California Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation.