California’s economy is at a critical inflection point. The state is the fourth-largest economy in the world, but also one of America’s most unequal. We are a leader in the clean energy transition, but also face existential climate risks, including $250 billion in damages from recent LA wildfires. As conflict in Iran roils global oil and gas markets and California navigates the job impacts of petroleum refinery closures, we are reminded yet again that our economy is not decoupled from fossil industry.
Conveniently, California already produces a key resource that could assist with this set of interrelated climate, economic, and security challenges: bio-based waste, much of which is currently left to rot and generate greenhouse gases in forests or landfills. The state could use up to 27 million dry tons of trees and shrubs from statewide forestry management, plus 20-23 million tons per year of aggregated organic waste from agricultural waste and municipal/industrial refuse. A strategy to collect and use these resources would create new markets for wood products, sustainable fuels (including for aviation), bio-based chemicals and materials, ecological restoration, and additional products—all while supporting quality jobs across the state.
This set of activities, and more, makes up the California Bioeconomy. The “Bioeconomy” is nothing new; at the national level, there is a formal definition established by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). For the purposes of our work, we focus on the segment of the bioeconomy represented by California’s biomass-resource economy: the collection, processing, and productive use of organic material the state already generates, including forest and wood residues, agricultural residues and food-processing byproducts, and organic municipal waste such as residential and industrial food scraps. The circular bioeconomy encompasses the conversion pathways that turn these waste streams into materials, chemicals, durable carbon products, fuels, energy, soil amendments, and other value-added goods, along with the infrastructure, workforce, markets, policy, and regional coordination required to keep that material circulating in the economy rather than burned, landfilled, or left to decay.
Many of these diverse bioeconomy industries represent a unique “win-win” opportunity for California, driving regional economic growth that builds upon California’s prowess in research and development.
Over the past decade, agencies and organizations across the state have investigated different aspects of the bioeconomy and its relationship to California’s climate and economic goals. But achieving these goals requires California to overcome real pinch-points on implementation. We will need to create new value streams, avoid wildfires, support foresters and farmers required to adapt to new regulations, reduce red tape for sustainable industrial development, stand up new bio-based industries, reduce methane emissions from unmanaged waste, and address other air and water quality impacts.
This all requires a dedicated industrial strategy.
Therefore, to truly realize the opportunity of the bioeconomy for the state’s climate and economic future, and in partnership with CALFIRE, CA FWD is developing a California Bioeconomy Roadmap that drives coordination and investment into this critical set of industries. This statewide roadmap will be published in late 2026 and will answer three key questions:
- What is the current state and future potential of the bioeconomy in California?
- What are the gaps and inter-regional challenges to achieving that potential, where statewide coordination or intervention is needed?
- What priority actions can resolve those challenges?
Background
CA FWD identified the bioeconomy as a core area of our “Energy and Industrial (R)Evolution” work during 2025, seeing it as a sector with the potential to address some of California’s biggest challenges: the need to support wildfire mitigation; the need to find new industrial growth and job opportunities in rural forested and agricultural regions; and the need to start seriously replacing petroleum in a wide range of consumer products. Over the past six months, as we have begun to focus on the economic opportunities provided by the bioeconomy, we have developed strong relationships with academic institutions, companies, and innovators in this space. This roadmap builds on our years of regional economic and workforce development activities related to the core elements of a strong bioeconomy, from rural economic development strategies to a statewide sustainable energy agenda to a wildfire reduction strategy that prioritizes forest management. We have leaned into wildfire reduction strategies through our Fiscal Resilience in a Changing Climate program. We have also built a reputation around sustainable regional economic development strategies, working in partnership with the California Stewardship Network (representing every region of the state) to support the state’s California Jobs First program, which helps regions identify areas of potential economic growth and expansion. This 3-year process has led multiple regions to prioritize the bioeconomy for economic investment—and drawn attention to the need for a statewide plan.
Filling a Gap in the Ecosystem
Our bioeconomy roadmap builds on decades of work across the state. Many regions of California have leaned into these issues, working on a variety of promising wood utilization plans, analyses, and projects, as well as incorporating the bioeconomy into their California Jobs First strategies. Similarly, the state has undertaken relevant efforts like BioMAT, which encouraged large investor-owned utilities to buy wholesale power from small renewable bioenergy projects; the Department of Conservation’s forest biofuels pilot program; the Office of Land-Use and Climate Innovation’s feedstock supply pilot program; CAL FIRE’s Wood Products and Bioenergy program; and IBank’s Climate Catalyst Fund.
However, despite the work by regions and state agencies, there remain significant challenges in aligning resources, investors, and regional stakeholders around a set of utilization pathways and concrete actions that, often, require inter-regional coordination to be successful. For instance, there is a significant opportunity to leverage existing land uses and facilities that have been part of the state’s BioMAT and BioRAM programs to support new and more advanced industrial biomass processing goals, but this requires multi-region coordination of new technologies, logistics, demand signals, and more.
Our Unique Expertise
CA FWD is uniquely positioned to combine the right mix of vision, expertise, and regional perspectives to build this bioeconomy roadmap. We are a multi-partisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to building a New California Economy—one that is sustainable, resilient, and inclusive. We support economic growth using a regions-up approach, stewarding state resources, and building resilience in the face of a changing climate. Our annual California Economic Summit provides an important convening space to bring together stakeholders from across the state, elevate models from across the nation and the world, and work collectively to develop solutions. Our staff working on this topic have extensive experience with industrial policy and planning, including senior roles in California government, federal government, and the broader energy and environmental sector.
If you are interested in contributing to or learning more about this effort to inform the state’s coordinated industrial strategy for the bioeconomy, please reach out to info@cafwd.org.
