FAQs

Unlike any other energy companies, Yosemite Clean Energy has a mission to serve the forest and farm communities in California, and provide the highest and best value for wood waste. It was founded to reduce the risk of wildfire and provide an outlet for forest and agricultural waste wood, all while producing carbon negative fuels. California is facing an undersupply of renewable fuels while at the same time facing a significant oversupply of wood waste caused by wildfires, other natural disturbances, and a cyclical agricultural industry. YCE simultaneously solves both problems. YCE works with communities to thin hazardous forest fuels and provide sustainable forest stewardship, which is helping save public lands from future catastrophic wildfires and the billions of dollars of associated ecological damage each year. YCE also provides an economical solution for the millions of tons of waste wood produced annually when orchards are pulled out at the end of their economic life, or are no longer able to be produced due to water constraints in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.

Each plant upcycles 90,000 bone dry tons of waste wood per year. This is enough wood to sustainably manage up to 5,000 acres of forest land per year, or an equivalent 5,000 acres of end-of-life tree orchards.

Yosemite Clean Energy has a diversified array of feedstock coming from both forest management and fire cleanup operations on public and private land, as well as agricultural orchard removal operations. As the feedstock supplies from individual providers and operations eb and flow by year, YCE has diversified its feedstock commitments to hedge against the unlikely event of a feedstock shortage on any given year. Further, our feedstock providers are owners of the projects, and have a vested interest in the successful operations of the plants.

Due to mismanagement of our forests, extreme drought, and climate change, California’s forests have become a tinderbox ready to explode. Each year the US Forest Service spends hundreds of millions of dollars on forest management, but to properly manage California forests would cost billions of additional dollars per year. By turning waste wood from forest management projects into a value-added product, YCE creates a market that makes forest management on federal lands economically sustainable, even without federal grants. This allows the Forest Service to work with forest management contractors to reduce the risk of wildfire without footing the bill.

Post-wildfire ecosystem restoration is extremely expensive, so only a very small fraction of public lands are restored post-catastrophic wildfire. Because YCE’s process can use burned wood, it provides an economically viable way to restore ecosystems post-fire, reducing the millions of tons of CO2 and methane that are emitted as burned forest wood decomposes following catastrophic wildfire. Once the dead and dying trees are removed, Yosemite Clean Energy will work with private and public agencies to meet reforestation goals and objectives to see our forests thrive again.

Calculated using the California Energy Commission’s CO2 calculator, Yosemite Clean Energy will remove 104,076 metric tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per plant per year. This is equivalent to taking over 22,500 cars off the road permanently.

Additional benefits include rural energy security, replacement of fossil fuels on rural and Tribal lands, rural economic diversification and development, climate resilience, sustainable and family-sustaining job opportunities, economic diversification in regions often over-levered to single industries, and more.

Each plant will produce 7 million kilograms of renewable hydrogen per year, enough to displace over 6 million gallons of diesel fuel, and supply a fleet of 500 class 8 trucks year-round.

​The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has identified carbon negative fuel like green hydrogen as a key technology and strategy for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 2045. Hydrogen production from biomass is one of the only true carbon negative ways to produce energy, meaning that more carbon is removed from the atmosphere than released into the atmosphere during the hydrogen’s production, transportation, distribution, and use.

YCE will utilize carbon capture and sequestration to ensure that more carbon is sequestered than is released throughout the production, transportation, and distribution of hydrogen.

YCE is working with Gunvor Group to market and sell YCE’s hydrogen production. Gunvor is one of the world’s largest independent commodities trading houses by turnover, creating logistics solutions that safely and efficiently move physical energy and bulk materials from where they are sourced and stored to where they are demanded most. YCE will also sell directly to local municipalities and truck fleets, and is open to discussing future partnerships for those looking for their own hydrogen solution.

Yosemite Clean Energy is currently in the engineering and permitting process for its flagship project in Oroville, CA.

The first plant is scheduled to come into full production in 2026.

Each plant will create at least 55 jobs, including an estimated 30 plant maintenance and operation staff and 25 wood waste transportation and preparation staff. The construction of the plant will also generate an estimated 150 temporary jobs up through commissioning.

First and foremost, Butte County is one of the counties most devastated by the catastrophic wildfire crisis over the past 6+ years. Butte County needs timely solutions to reduce the risk of wildfire before the rest of the forests in the region burn. Yosemite Clean Energy specifically sited its Project in Oroville to service Butte County because Oroville is located strategically between the sources of feedstock and the demand for low carbon transportation fuel, as well as within access to one of California’s first carbon capture and sequestration wells.

Yes, YCE is also developing a project in Tuolumne County, near Chinese Camp, and has received significant community support for its project there. YCE also has site security for a third project near Visalia, California, in the central San Joaquin Valley.

YCE has received 5 different grants from the state and federal governments totaling $6.75 million. In 2023, YCE received an Ultra-Low Carbon Fuel grant from the California Energy Commission, and two separate Forest Biomass Pilot grants from the California Department of Conservation. In 2022, YCE received a Wood Innovations grant from the United States Forest Service, and a Business Development grant from Cal Fire. YCE is extremely grateful for its support from CEC, CA DOC, Cal Fire, and USFS.

The Project’s biomass to biofuel plant will convert forest wood waste into synthetic gas (syngas) through Repotec’s dual-bed gasifier. Biomass gasification is a commercially proven technology that converts low-value feedstock into the building blocks of high-value renewable fuels. Biomass gasification has been used on an industrial scale in Europe for nearly 20 years. In 2003, Repotec commercialized dual-bed biomass gasifiers previously developed by the Technical University of Vienna, and built its first biomass gasification plant in Gussing, Austria. Their first plant has served as a model for engineering various biomass gasification plants across the globe since 2003. YCE will deploy this same technology to convert biomass first into a syngas and then through further conversion, purification and separation using commercially available technologies, deliver ultra-pure, carbon-negative green hydrogen.