Wed, Jan 21, 2026 1:15 PM – 2:45 PM EST
Communities across the West face rising wildfire danger as forests have grown denser and more volatile. Federal, state, and county agencies fund thinning to remove the woody material that drives severe fires, but progress remains limited because the biomass has little commercial value and no consistent end use. When there is nowhere for this material to go, public agencies bear almost the entire cost of removal, limiting how much thinning they can fund each year.
Developers face the opposite challenge. Companies trying to build biochar, clean-fuel, and other biomass-conversion facilities cannot attract investment because the feedstock supply is unpredictable. Contract terms are short, volumes vary, and no central entity coordinates supply, storage, preprocessing, or quality assurance. This webinar examines how an independent biomass market manager can help close that gap. By coordinating long-term supply commitments across jurisdictions, planning storage and preprocessing, providing quality control, and establishing standard multi-year contracts, a market manager can make thinning more effective and give developers the reliability needed to finance new projects. A model now being explored in northern Arizona could be adapted across other wildfire-prone regions.
Panelists Include:
Bill Vinnicombe represents SIXco, A commercial developer, Sixco, is seeking to convert pinyon–juniper biomass into clean fuels. He will explain what developers need to commit to long-term investment in biomass projects and how coordinated supply and contracting can reduce risk.
Sarah Diemar, Royal Danish Embassy (Washington, DC) A policy and diplomatic perspective on Danish clean-fuel ambitions and how Danish agencies and businesses advance reliable, responsibly sourced biomass.
Zach Knight, Blue Forest Conservation A conservation-finance perspective on how supply assurance, shared risk, and solid performance data can unlock private capital for wildfire resilience.
