Climate Change, Decarbonisation, and Bioenergy Production: Integrating Policy Science Woody biomass policy in Oregon and Arizona - strategies for Building regional business capacity

In the Western United States, with significant public ownership of forests and high cultural, ecological, and economic values placed on those forests, bioenergy policy is as much about forest policy as it is about energy policy.  Efforts to increase use of woody biomass for heat and electricity are driven by desires to increase community safety from wildfire, recover endangered species and restore forested landscapes while created new local economic opportunity.  This is all done in a context of significant conflict over forest management and declining government budgets.  In this presentation, we evaluate the effect of the Woody Biomass Utilization Grant program on creating regional bioenergy capacity.    We find that small strategic investments can make a considerable difference in bioenergy capacity, and non-business actors such as non-govermental organizations and government agencies can play a key role in increasing the effectiveness of those investments.  However, our findings also suggest the importance of attending to all part of the supply chain simultaneously.  Regional cluster development involving intermediary organizations may help increase impacts.  Finally, there are significant limits to studying individual policies in isolation, especially in a fragmented policy environments such as the United States.