California’s forests generate an enormous amount of biowaste — material that too often becomes wildfire fuel or simply goes unused. At CleanStart’s latest Perspective webinar, John Azevedo, Founder & CEO of Forager Fuels, shared how he’s turning that problem into fuel.

Forager Fuels is building small, portable gasification systems that convert forest bio-waste into green hydrogen, with biochar as a co-product. Rather than chase a massive permanent facility, Azevedo chose a deliberately different path. “This forest waste problem is a pretty distributed form of waste,” he explained. “In every other example of industry and history, it didn’t take long for us to figure out that problem needs a distributed solution.”

That discipline runs through everything. Before designing any technology, Azevedo spent nearly a year talking with landowners, utilities, and timber operators to understand the true cost of wood-waste disposal. He credits a concept he calls the minimum viable audience: “First, you find your audience… and you get to know them extremely, extremely well. And that helps create a picture of what your MVP would look like.”

His funding strategy mirrors that patience. Backed so far by non-dilutive grants — including a circular-economy competition won through the Carlsen Center’s Circular Economy Competition sponsored by West Placer Waste Management — Forager is now raising its first outside round. Instead of asking investors for everything at once, Azevedo focuses on the next milestone. “What is the core couple of pieces of technology to prove this out at the next scale?” he said. “That allows me to keep de-risking and making it more and more attractive to other investors.”

The approach is paying off. Just weeks ago, the team pulled pure hydrogen from its proof-of-concept system. “Gosh, that felt so good,” Azevedo said, “to be able to see biomass on one side, and pure hydrogen out the other.” One major utility told him his approach could become “the blue sky option for all the biomass waste that we create.”

CleanStart Executive Director Thomas Hall captured why the story matters: “This is what CleanStart does — showcasing founders building our clean economy right here, and keeping the community close.”

If John’s work resonates with you — as a partner, customer, investor, or fellow believer in our regional clean economy — learn more at ForagerFuels.com and connect with John on LinkedIn. And to keep discovering the founders shaping California’s clean economy, join the CleanStart community at our next event.

This CleanStart conversation was made possible by our sponsors: SMUD, E2, Chico Start, and The Carlsen Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Every EV driver knows the feeling: you pull up to a charger, and it’s dead. As I reminded our audience at last week’s Featured Founder webinar, one in five public charging sessions fails today — not because the cars don’t work, but because stations fail silently, and operators don’t find out until a frustrated driver is standing right there. Each fix can mean a technician dispatched at north of $1,000, and two or three trips before it’s solved.

That’s the problem a team of UC Davis and Sac State students set out to solve — and frankly, they’re moving faster than companies ten times their size. Meet Data Pigeon, an AI-native diagnostics platform for EV charging networks. Their models already train on more than 1.4 billion real-world data points and can predict charger failures up to 12 hours before they happen. True to their tagline: “Where EV charging meets reliability.”

Co-founders Senara Millawabandara (CEO), Suhani Shokeen (COO), and Sina Vaghefi (CTO) didn’t start here. The company began as a GovTech idea before a personal frustration redirected them. “Senara actually has an EV, and she’s faced this issue multiple times… every single time she’d go to a charger, it’s always down,” Suhani explained. “The only skill set we could bring was something technical, and that’s what we did. We built machine learning models around charger reliability, and that’s how Data Pigeon was born.”

Rather than chase hype, they went deep. Partnering with the renowned UC Davis EV Research Center, they built charger-specific health baselines and now flag 14 precursor fault codes that historically precede major failures. The metric that matters most to operators? “Our number one metric is mean time to resolution,” Senara said — how fast a broken charger becomes a working one again.

And here’s what I want you to take away: Data Pigeon has customers. They’ve landed their first paying operator — whose highest-revenue chargers in LA now benefit from early warnings — and they’re in active talks with manufacturers eager to integrate predictive maintenance. Their approach is grounded: a free pilot, then a paid partnership once the results speak for themselves. As Sina put it, “Confidence is the key part, and the second part is having a good product.”

When asked what’s next, the answer was simple. “Right now, we want to get more customers,” Senara said — while making the models plug-and-play enough to scale across operators, utilities, and beyond.

If this resonates with you, connect with them. A single warm introduction could be the one that helps Data Pigeon grow. Reach the team at datapigeon.ai or info@datapigeon.ai — and if you know an operator who needs this, reach out to me and I’ll make the intro.

Finally, our gratitude to the partners who make CleanStart’s work possible: the Carlsen Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, E2, SMUD, and ChicoStart. Thank you for investing in the founders building our region’s clean future.

The fourth annual Circular Economy Innovation Competition brought together researchers, startups, and entrepreneurs working to transform waste into economic opportunity. Held May 13 at the Roseville Venture Lab, the competition featured 12 finalists presenting solutions focused on material recovery, waste reduction, wastewater treatment, and reducing dependence on volatile international commodity markets. The event was presented by the Western Placer Waste Management Authority and the Carlsen Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

Now in its fourth year, the competition has become a growing platform for innovators exploring how recoverable waste streams can be turned into commercially viable products, technologies, and systems. Organizers have continued to position the program as more than a sustainability initiative, focusing instead on practical applications that can reduce costs, improve supply chains, and create new market opportunities.

“This competition aims to foster innovation and highlight the capacity for this region to serve as a hub for circular economy ventures,” said Cameron Law, executive director of the Carlsen Center, in program materials.

This year’s top prize of $20,000 went to Forager Fuels, led by founder and CEO John Azevedo. The company was recognized for its approach to creating value from waste materials while addressing broader recovery and supply chain challenges.

The competition’s $5,000 Innovator Award went to EcoPress Sacramento and founder and CEO Sam Mejia. EcoPress was recognized for its work focused on plastic waste reuse and upcycling innovation.

The finalist lineup reflected the growing diversity of companies entering the circular economy space. Participating teams included 3B Protection, Biochosen, California Product Stewardship Council, EcoPress Sacramento, Emergence, Forager Fuels, Hybridworks, Patriot, Sotera Materials, Symmetry Wood, Vigsur, and Visions Recycling Inc. The companies approached the challenge in different ways including manufacturing, recycling systems, material science, and operational efficiency.

Attendees and supporters pointed to the quality of this year’s finalists and the broader momentum surrounding circular economy innovation in the Sacramento region. One attendee described the finalists as “innovators building solutions around one of the region’s most underutilized assets: recoverable waste,” while another noted the event showcased “creativity and collaboration focused on turning recoverable waste into opportunity.”

After more than 15 years of R&D, West Biofuels (WBF) in Woodland is building its first two commercial scale plants to convert ag and forestry residues into electricity.  It has plans to develop many more as these first two prove their commercial viability and as they widen the number of valuable products they could produce.  We recently sat down with COO Dr. Matt Summers to get the details on what has been happening.  

WBF has been getting increased attention because of its focus on conversion of forestry waste to valuable products at a time when the California wildfires of the last half-decade have made the need to clear the forests of underbrush continually and deal with the damaged timber much more urgent.  WBF began with some R&D contracts to build a “process development unit” that would allow them to “tinker” with various components and approaches to deal with a variety of urban, orchard, ag and forest high-cellulose wastes.  The original idea was to convert these wastes efficiently into a gas containing a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane that could fuel a reciprocating engine-generator to make electricity.  While that looked simplest and most achievable on paper, that is not the way things worked out.  The prices utilities were willing to pay for power from renewable sources were falling and, as many have encountered, feeding an engine with the variable and mixed synthesis gas was just too hard on the engine.  

Then, two things changed that put WBF on the road to a commercial unit.  First, they switched to using a different technology for power production.  They now use an indirect-fired power generator—an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system made by Turboden.  In an ORC, a fuel is burned to vaporize an organic working fluid (like in a steam boiler) that feeds a power turbine and is condensed.  It is a closed loop system, so the nasty stuff in the fuel doesn’t much matter.  It is less efficient than feeding an internal combustion engine, but the savings in maintenance more than justify the switch.

Second, in a moment of foresight the California Legislature passed the Bioenergy Market Adjusting Tariff (BioMAT) law requiring utilities to pay a very favorable fixed price for electricity derived from biomass in small generators less than 5 MW in size up to an aggregate of 250 MW (Public Utilities Code § 399.20).  For the IOUs, this Feed-In Tariff (FIT) operates as a “must-take” contract in its portfolio. If the participant generates the power, the IOU must take it and pay for it. Electricity generated as part of the BioMAT program counts towards the utilities’ RPS and resource adequacy targets.  Small-scale bioenergy projects can be procured in three categories with allocations and prices set by the CPUC:

Table 1. BioMAT Allocation Summary in 2020

These fixed prices are about four times what power from solar and wind farms receive.  BioMAT is a huge boost for these favored forms of waste-to-energy.  

With these two changes, WBF has moved to market a 3 MW scale biomass-to-electricity within California with a plan to drive down costs over time, add more technology, and open up a wider market.  WBF has signed contracts with two entities to build these plants.  One is under construction in Williams and will use rice hulls as a feedstock getting the $183.72/MWh FIT.  Another is near Burney in Shasta County, with forestry residue feedstock (getting the $199.72/MWh FIT), and is awaiting the start of construction.  Each project costs about $25 million, but is expected to generate $85 million in revenue over 20 years.  The Burney plant also has the option of diverting output to the production of as much as 6,000 tons/year of biochar, used for filtration, as a soil amendment or an asphalt additive at $80-100/ton as an added or optional source of revenue.  Now WBF is seeking financing and investment to support another half-dozen of similar plants while there is still headroom under the 250 MW cap on BioMAT projects. 

Knowing that the 250 MW California market may represent a market for only a handful more of their first commercial plants given the number of other competitors, WBF is continuing to “tinker” to see what would widen its customer appeal (and the process development unit has gotten much bigger).  The push for now is to feed the synthesis gas to a catalyst bed to create liquid chemicals and fuels.  These products generally have a higher value than electricity outside of the BioMAT market, improving the economics of the process.  WBF is looking at two catalyst paths.  The first, done through contracts with the California Energy Commission, is to focus the output on mixed alcohols and methane.  WBF has found that it can make a product stream that has half the energy in the mixed alcohols and half in the methane fraction.  Both can be sold directly.  The alcohols include butanol, n-propanol (the straight chain version vs. isopropanol), and ethanol.  All three have good commercial markets, especially the n-propanol which is used as a solvent for inks as in ink-jet printers.  There is also a remaining gas fraction that can be burned to make electricity.  

The second approach, funded by the DOE, is to produce jet fuel and diesel through a Fischer-Tropsch-type catalyst supplied by an Austrian partner.  Those types of catalysts are relatively non-selective and produce a witches’ brew of products.  For WBF, only about 20% of the feedstock energy content ends up in jet fuel and diesel.  There is a substantial quantity of linear waxes as well, plus waste gases that would go to an ORC power plant.  The objective of the DOE contract is to figure out how to increase the yield of the jet fuel/diesel fraction and to explore how the waxes could be used in a standard oil refinery to increase the renewable content of motor fuels or lube oils, possibly by using spare Fluidized-bed Catalytic Cracking (FCC) capacity.  Adding a renewable feedstock to the refinery would help get a better Low Carbon Fuel Standard score, avoiding some of the penalties for being above the maximum allowed by CARB.  That incentive could make the WBF plants economical beyond the boost they get from the BioMAT prices.

Matt has always wanted to get to the point where they were building dozens of plants and making a real impact.  With these first two plants, he is excited to see that dream starting to become real even though it took fifteen years.  The tinkering continues. 

Watch the Recording

California just launched one of the most consequential experiments in grid modernization, and most of the business community hasn’t noticed yet.

In March, Momentum announced the public launch of the Industrial, Agriculture, and Water Load Flexibility Hub, known as IAW FlexHub. Funded by the California Energy Commission through the Electric Program Investment Charge, with additional backing from Southern California Edison and PG&E, the Hub brings together Momentum, UC Davis, EPRI, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to do something California desperately needs: turn the state’s industrial, agricultural, and water sectors int

The CEC has committed up to $17 million to the effort, with the first $10.6 million already funding four demonstration projects. The Hub is also accepting demonstration project concepts from individuals, businesses, and research institutions, which means this is not a closed-door academic exercise. It’s an open door for cleantech entrepreneurs.

Why Industrial, Agriculture, and Water?

These three sectors are some of the largest, most flexible electricity consumers in California, yet historically among the least integrated into grid operations. Irrigation pumps, water treatment systems, cold storage, and industrial processes all have natural windows of operational slack. They can shift when they draw power without shifting what they accomplish. The CEC’s founding solicitation for the Hub frames this directly: aligning electricity consumption with dynamic grid conditions is essential to meeting California’s climate and clean energy goals.

That flexibility is exactly what California’s grid needs as renewable generation becomes the dominant resource. Solar floods the system midday and disappears at sunset. The old model of building more capacity to meet every peak is expensive and slow. The smarter path, and the one IAW FlexHub is built to prove out, is unlocking the flexibility that already exists across the economy.

The Marginal Cost to Consumer Connection

This is where Marginal Cost to Consumer, or MCC, becomes the business case rather than just an engineering concept.

Every kilowatt-hour on the grid has a real-time cost of delivery that swings based on what’s actually happening on the system at that moment: which generators are running, how congested the lines are, how close the grid is to its limits. CAISO captures this through Locational Marginal Prices at thousands of points across the network. The problem is that almost no customer ever sees that signal. Most ratepayers pay flat or seasonal rates that bear little resemblance to the true marginal cost of the power they’re using.

Research funded by the CEC, including work on Transactive Load Management pricing, has shown that translating wholesale marginal prices into usable signals for demand-side resources can meaningfully shift consumption toward lower-cost, lower-emission periods. When industrial, agricultural, and water operators can see and respond to something closer to the true marginal cost of electricity, instead of a flattened average, the entire system benefits. Peak demand drops. Expensive and dirty peaker plants run less. Savings flow back to all ratepayers, not just the large customers who can negotiate special rates.

IAW FlexHub is, in effect, a real-world laboratory for closing the gap between what the grid actually costs at any given moment and what consumers are signaled to do about it. Get that right at scale, and the affordability conversation in California changes.

Where AI Fits In

AI is reshaping this story from two directions at once, and both matter to anyone building a business in this space.

On one side, AI is a demand driver. Data centers and AI training infrastructure are adding load to the California grid faster than almost any other source, and that growth is colliding directly with the state’s clean energy and reliability goals. The grid cannot simply build its way out of that demand fast enough.

On the other side, AI is one of the most powerful tools available for managing that demand. Forecasting load shapes across thousands of irrigation systems, water facilities, and industrial sites; optimizing when flexible loads should shift; predicting grid stress before it happens; these are exactly the kinds of problems machine learning is suited to solve. The same technology straining the grid is also the technology best positioned to help operate it intelligently.

IAW FlexHub sits right at that intersection. The demonstration projects it funds will need AI-driven forecasting, optimization, and control to make load flexibility commercially viable and scalable, not just a pilot-stage curiosity.

A Model California Can Export

If IAW FlexHub succeeds, it won’t stay a California story. The Hub is explicitly designed for scalability and replicability, with the goal of producing standards, best practices, and proven technologies that other states and countries can adopt. California has a long history of writing the playbook other markets eventually follow, from vehicle emissions standards to renewable portfolio mandates. Grid-interactive load flexibility in industrial, agricultural, and water sectors could be next.

For investors, startups, and researchers, that means the window to build, test, and prove technology here is open right now, with state funding actively seeking partners. For regulators and utilities, it’s a chance to pressure-test marginal cost pricing concepts in the field before they become policy.

Where CleanStart Comes In

These are exactly the conversations CleanStart exists to convene: the intersection of grid innovation, AI, and business opportunity, grounded in what’s actually happening in Sacramento and across California’s energy landscape.