AUBURN, Calif. – The Placer County Board of Supervisors took steps to attract biomass investment at their board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 7, as part of the Tahoe Central Sierra Biomass Aggregation Pilot Project.

The project seeks to address a barrier to healthy forest management in the region.

“One of the biggest bottlenecks or challenges or obstacles to that progress,” Josh Huntsinger, Director of Agriculture, Parks, and Natural Resources said, “is that we don’t have sufficient facilities which are economically feasible to take that biomass out of the woods and do something with it.”

One way to address the challenge is by attracting private sector investment in biomass utilization facilities. But in order to attract an often multimillion investment, investors need to know they will get a return on that investment.

That’s where a Biofuel Development Opportunity Zone (BDOZ) risk rating comes in. It’s an investment style risk rating that informs on an area’s potential for biomass utilization. Ecostrat USA Inc was contracted to develop ratings for Placer County, Nevada County and El Dorado County.

Ecostrat awarded all three counties an “A” or high quality investment rating, which means they have a strong capacity to support new bio-based plant operations with a low risk of default.

However, Ecostrat said short-term challenges could be fluctuations from forest project activity, the higher costs of labor, and dependency on non-timber forestry objects, but offered mitigation strategies for each.

Supervisor Cindy Gustafson inquired what would have to occur to achieve the higher AA rating. Ecostrat informed that there are 80 risk indicators, but the main limitation here is the lack sawmills.

According to Ecostrat’s presentation, of the 61 BDOZ ratings across North America as of July 2025, only 10 have an AA rating. A majority have A ratings.

Following the presentation, the board directed the Regional Forest Health Division staff to utilize the rating report in coordination with the county’s Office of Economic Development to attract additional biomass development.