Camptonville Community Partnership (CCP), in collaboration with the Yuba Watershed Protection and Fire Safe Council, a private landowner, and the local community, is working to develop the Forest Biomass Business Center (FBBC) at the site of a former sawmill near Camptonville, California. The FBBC will be a small industrial campus and business incubator, hosting enterprises that create value-added products from forest biomass. By creating markets for biomass and small diameter wood, which are currently underutilized, the FBBC will facilitate much-needed forest fuels reduction projects in the region.

The FBBC will feature a small-scale power generation facility, which will produce up to 5 MW of clean, renewable energy by turning wood into electricity. The plant will utilize a direct combustion boiler and steam turbine. These technologies are commercially proven, reliable, and tolerant of variations in feedstock type, size, and moisture content. The fuel for the plant will come from sustainable forest management activities aimed at reducing the threat of high intensity wildfires on nearby private and federal land. The majority of the energy will be sold to Pacific Gas and Electric under California’s new BioMAT program (established by Senate Bill 1122), which sets minimum pricing for electricity sourced from forest biomass.

Located at the Forest Biomass Business Center, the plant could also supply energy and/or heat to other co-located value-added wood processing businesses, such as a commercial firewood producer, or a wood pellet or wood shavings manufacturer. The planned location for the FBBC is on a parcel of Soper-Wheeler land, near Camptonville.