The B-RREADI for Wildfire Challenge is a transformative initiative designed to reduce wildfire risk by increasing the number of biofuel projects in regions designated as Very High Priority wildfire zones.
The program will create a network of 100 Wildfire BDO Zone™ Rated Regions (W-BDO Zones), powered by pre-established Biomass Supply Cooperatives within each zone.
These zones will turn excess forest biomass, which poses significant wildfire risks, into valuable biofuels.
The goal of the B-RREADI for Wildfire Challenge is to decrease wildfire risk across the US and help deliver on the US Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy by increasing the rate of biofuel project development in wildfire priority areas by 10x.
Create a network of 100 ‘shovel ready’ Wildfire BDO Zone™ Rated Regions (W-BDO Zones) in regions designated Very High Priority wildfire risk, and powered by Biomass Supply Cooperatives within each of those W-BDO Zones.
W-BDO Zones can play a pivotal role in wildfire reduction by attracting new biofuel projects to regions with high fuel loads. By facilitating the development of biofuel, and other biomanufacturing facilities, W-BDO Zones create opportunities to utilize this excess biomass. These projects can process, and convert potentially hazardous biomass into biofuels, thereby reducing the fuel load in fire-prone areas and mitigating the frequency and intensity of wildfires.
Rapid scale-up of biofuels is critical not only for the future vibrancy of the U.S. agricultural and forestry sectors — but it is also key to mitigating wildfire risk. The expansion of markets for domestically produced biofuels will create new markets for forest biomass with high hazard potential, thereby supporting removals and decreasing wildfire potential.
However, a key bottleneck inhibits progress: lack of transparency between local biomass supply chains and biofuels developers — especially in federal forest regions at risk for wildfire.
Specifically, there is a disconnect between regions that possess suitable biomass assets, infrastructure and willingness to support biofuels production, and project developers seeking site locations that present exactly these attributes.
As a result, project developers spend months, or years, searching for suitable locations, understanding the quantity and cost ranges of sustainable project available feedstock, developing relationships, obtaining contracts from (often skeptical) local suppliers, and getting buy-in from other stakeholders in the local community — while regions with ideal characteristics to support biofuels project development have no credible, recognized way to signal “regional readiness” and are effectively “lost” to bio-based development.
These inefficiencies hamper project development speed in high fire hazard areas, and function as barriers to scale-up of American made biofuels.
The B-RREADI for Wildfire Challenge directly addresses these bottlenecks by delivering a catalogue of “biofuel-ready” regions — each of which encompasses multiple areas designated by the US Forest Service as “Very High Priority” regions at severe risk of wildfire. These W-BDO Zones present ideal combinations of biomass surplus, strong infrastructure, and cooperative groups of local suppliers willing to form resilient feedstock supply chains for new bio-based plants.
For more information, visit: The Burning Need for BDO Zones: Mitigating Catastrophic Wildfires with Market-Based Solutions.
The Biofuel Development Opportunity (BDO) Zone Initiative certifies ‘regional readiness’ for bio-manufacturing, creates global connections and ignites an influx of new energy opportunities for farmers, economic developers, and rural businesses. A BDO Zone rating is an internationally recognized, standards-based technical risk assessment of a region’s feedstock, supply chain, and infrastructure risk with respect to the development potential for new biofuel plants. BDO Zone ratings are site location bullseyes for bio-project development. Investment grade ratings are force-multipliers for attracting new manufacturing plants to the areas where they are most likely to succeed, drive investment and create jobs.
