California biomass facility hopes to receive $14.6m from US government

Jan 05, 2023

A biomass facility has been proposed to be constructed just outside of Jamestown in Tuolumne County, California in the US, reported MyMotherLode.
The site would be constructed on 17 acres near the Sierra Conservation Centre, off O'Byrnes Ferry Road.

Tuolumne Biomass LLC plans to lease the property from T-Five Ranches Inc, with county documents stating that an existing solar farm would remain operational.
The project applicants are seeking a Conditional Use Permit, Air Pollution Control Distric Permit, construction permit, grading and encroachment permits, changes in the Williamson Act contract and state water board permits.

The Tuolumne County Community Development Department are currently reviewing the project in a 30-day process.

With a total project cost of $14.6 million (€13.7m), with the majority coming from government grants and loans - including a $4.2m (€3.9m) grant from the HUD National Resilience Programme, a $3.5m (€3.2m) loan from the same programme, a $2m (€1.8m) HUD Residual Receipts Loan, a $2m CAL Fire Workforce Development Grant, an $800,000 (€753k) US Forest Service Community Wood Grant, a $60k (€565k),RCAC/EDA Revolving Small Business Loan and $1.5 million (€1.4m) in private equity funding.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.