The US Pacific Northwest (PNW) faces increasing wildfires due to forest overcrowding and climate change, posing significant environmental and public health risks. To reduce the wildfire risk, forest agencies recommend mechanical treatments to remove excess biomass through thinning and regeneration harvest. The residues generated from these treatments are typically piled and burned in a controlled manner. This act of burning, also known as prescribed burning, has been traditionally used in North American forests. In addition to residual woody biomass from forest operations, large amounts of residues are produced by sawmills during lumber production. The sawmill processes generate co-products such as hog fuel, sawdust, wood chips, and bark. Due to a lack of economic outlets for this biomass, some of it gets underutilized to the extend that some of the mill residues get discarded as waste in landfills. Repurposing this surplus biomass, which gets discarded as waste could be used to produce value-added products, such as bioenergy products, could be both environmentally and economically valuable. CINTRAFOR researchers have undertaken a wide range of research ranging from assessing economic viability of biomass collection for bioenergy production to developing woody biomass-based jet fuel.

Research Briefs

Bioenergy and the Feed-in-Tariff in Japan: Creating Demand for Domestic Wood

Increasing Demand for Wood Pellets in Japan and South Korea