Mackenzie Castruita the Business Manager for West Biofuels explains some of the innerworkings at the Hat Creek Bioenergy facility in Burney, California and how public lands and partners are coming together to power a community. (Forest Service video by Andrew Avitt)

Editor’s note: In 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service awarded $80 million in Wood Innovation Grants to support wood products manufacturing, expand active forest management, and accelerate energy innovation. West Biofuels is one past grant recipient showing how investing in wood innovations can power rural communities and increase the health of our nation’s forests.

National forests and grasslands provide plenty for the American public, from recreation opportunities to resources like drinking water, minerals, gas, oil and timber. Forests across the country are also ramping up production of another common good—electricity.

The Hat Creek Bioenergy Facility, located in Burney, California, began Commercial Operations in late June and converts biomass from surrounding forests into electricity for the local grid. The facility hosted its ribbon-cutting ceremony Nov. 10 to celebrate the commissioning and successful first months of operations.

Small bioenergy facilities are often near national forests and the communities they serve. Hat Creek Bioenergy is a smaller bioenergy facility strategically developed near a rural, remote community threatened by wildfires.

Land managers and contractors gather excess biomass such as branches, limbs and smaller trees from surrounding forested areas. They turn that material into woodchips about the same consistency as the mulch you might find at your local garden center. Those woodchips are then loaded onto trucks and transported to the facility to be used as feedstock for energy production.

Biotrash or biomass

“We are converting what most people would consider waste into something that is useful,” said Matt Summers, chief operating officer of West Biofuels, the developer that built and operates the facility in partnership with Hat Creek Bioenergy.

Summers, an engineer by training, designs biomass energy systems and has been working on developing technologies at the company's main research facility in Woodland, California, which started back in 2006.

In the early days of West Biofuels, the biomass of choice was agriculturally based—old orchard trees, prunings, rice straw, or husks. In recent years, the company’s biomass research has expanded to forest residuals, which abound in rural communities and public lands.

“Our core technology at West Biofuels is biomass gasification. We turn the biomass into a gas that's then either used directly for heat or energy, or can be upgraded to other types of fuels, like renewable natural gas, ethanol, methanol, diesel fuel or jet fuel.”

The journey from biomass to electricity starts in the forest. Projects that remove trees from overstocked forests, harvest timber or restore landscapes affected by wildfire, drought, or invasive species and disease often create woody biomass as a byproduct. That biomass is then chipped and transported to the bioenergy facility.

There, the woodchips are fed at a rate of 3 to 4 dry tons an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 12 months a year, into the facility and converted into electricity.  The plant only shuts down two weeks per year for scheduled maintenance.

But that’s not all. At the very end of the process, a byproduct called biochar – a blackish type of mulch –is produced that is then saved and sold to farmers for soil improvement, a type of fertilizer and moisture and nutrient retainer. The added benefit of biochar is that it helps build up soil carbon.

“It’s right for the environment and actually means more value from the feedstock,” Summers said. “If we didn't make biochar from this process but instead make ash, we would have to pay to dispose of it. So, we've turned something that was a cost to operation and have turned it into a new revenue stream. And that's how we try to view every step in the process.”

Power and defensible space for the people of Burney

In Northern California at the southernmost tip of the Cascade Range, between two national forests and a national park, the town of Burney, population 3,000, is outnumbered and surrounded by about a billion trees.

It’s the ideal place for a bioenergy facility like the one at Hat Creek Bio in more ways than one, said Mackenzie Castruita, business manager for West Biofuels. She has been involved in contract, feedstock, and grant management with the company for the last four years.

“We consider Hat Creek Bioenergy to be a community-scale bioenergy facility,” said Castruita. “It generates about three megawatts of power, roughly what the community of Burney uses in terms of electricity and puts this power onto the local distribution grid.”

Having a local energy source like the Hat Creek Bioenergy Facility means the community will be less susceptible to outages, which often disproportionately affect rural communities. Aging infrastructure, or public safety power shutoffs, when an electric company intentionally turns off electricity due to increased wildfire risk, are just some of the more common catalysts.

While maintaining a steady supply of power for the next 20 years and beyond, the plant will also support local economy and job growth. Operating the facility employs 15 full-time jobs, from facility operators to contracted forestry professionals who chip and haul the feedstock material to the project site.

“We are grateful to partner with our local feedstock providers, including Del Logging, Headrick Logging, Tubit, and Warner Enterprises as well as the local Resource Conservation Districts, to name a few,” said Castruita “We are all focused on supporting the health of our surrounding forests and safety of our local communities.”

“Currently, the Hat Creek Bioenergy Facility is taking in biomass from private as well as various Forest Service projects usually within 30 miles of the facility,” said Castruita.

These projects use mechanical thinning and removal of small-diameter trees, limbs and brush in those areas, bolstering forest health and wildfire mitigation efforts. West Biofuels estimates that the Hat Creek Bioenergy Facility could help land managers treat about 5 square miles of forest a year and help create more fire-resilient forests around Burney.

“Everyone knows someone that has lost a home or has been affected by a forest fire,” said Castruita. “I’ve been living in the Northern California for the last 10 years. I know friends and colleagues that have lived in communities that have been devastated by wildfire. This is the norm for these communities out here.

And so being able to be a part of a company that supports healthy forest management practices, thinning projects, and also keeping that wood and fuel off the ground and putting it to use, it’s really something and exciting to be a part of.”

Partners in energy and forest management

The intertwined relationship between the Hat Creek Bioenergy Facility, the town of Burney, industry and the surrounding national forests exemplifies what the Forest Service aims to accomplish across the country.

Each year, national forests have a need to remove excess biomass. There are many potential reasons: a wildfire may have left a landscape with too many charred, dead or dying trees; Invasive species and disease may have proliferated in an area; Leftover trimmings from timber harvests may need to be cleaned up; or fuel breaks made around rural communities, areas that need to be thinned or modified to reduce and slow the spread of wildfires.

Whatever the reason, the Forest Service, foresters, hydrologists, silviculturists, soil scientists, and timber specialists work together with the forest products industry to actively manage the forest.

That’s why the Forest Service’s National Active Forest Management is the intersection of a strategically placed bioenergy facility like the one in Burney and a natural landscape in need. In this new age of conservation, what’s good for business can also help forests thrive.

For more information on active forest management and how local industries are playing a role, please see the announcement USDA Invests $200M to Expand Timber Production, Strengthen Rural Economies, Secure American Industry.

Or for more information Wood Innovations Program Grants please visit our website.

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