    [House Hearing, 117 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                    SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY'S ROLE IN CLIMATE
                                   SOLUTIONS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                          SUBCOMMITTEE ON UNDERSERVED,
                  AGRICULTURAL, AND RURAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
                                 UNITED STATES
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                  HEARING HELD
                               SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

                                   __________

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                Small Business Committee Document Number 117-033
                 Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov

                                   __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    45-582                     WASHINGTON : 2021

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS

                     NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman
                              JARED GOLDEN, Maine
                              JASON CROW, Colorado
                             SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
                             KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
                            DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
                             MARIE NEWMAN, Illinois
                           CAROLYN BOURDEAUX, Georgia
                             TROY CARTER, Louisiana
                              JUDY CHU, California
                           DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
                           ANTONIO DELGADO, New York
                         CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
                              ANDY KIM, New Jersey
                             ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
                  BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri, Ranking Member
                             ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
                            JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
                            PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
                            DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
                            CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York
                           ANDREW GARBARINO, New York
                             YOUNG KIM, California
                             BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
                             BYRON DONALDS, Florida
                             MARIA SALAZAR, Florida
                          SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin

                     Melissa Jung, Majority Staff Director
                Ellen Harrington, Majority Deputy Staff Director
                         David Planning, Staff Director

                                C O N T E N T S

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page
    Hon. Jared Golden................................................     1
    Hon. Jim Hagedorn................................................     3

                                   WITNESSES

    Mr. Dana Doran, Executive Director, Professional Logging
      Contractors of Maine, Augusta, ME..............................     7
    Dr. Adam Daigneault, Associate Professor of Forest Policy and
      Economics, University of Maine, Orono, ME......................     9
    Mr. Mark Thibodeau, Regional Manager, ReEnergy Stratton LLC,
      Carrabassett Valley, ME........................................    11
    Mr. Scott Dane, Executive Director, American Logger Council,
      Gilbert, MN....................................................    13

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared Statements:
        Mr. Dana Doran, Executive Director, Professional Logging
          Contractors of Maine, Augusta, ME..........................    31
        Dr. Adam Daigneault, Associate Professor of Forest Policy and
          Economics, University of Maine, Orono, ME..................    35
        Mr. Mark Thibodeau, Regional Manager, ReEnergy Stratton LLC,
          Carrabassett Valley, ME....................................    41
        Mr. Scott Dane, Executive Director, American Logger Council,
          Gilbert, MN................................................    46
    Questions for the Record:
        None.
    Answers for the Record:
        None.
    Additional Material for the Record:
        American Loggers Council.....................................    52
        Biomass and Carbon Neutrality................................    58
        Future Logging Careers Act...................................    62
        Grandfathering Roads Being Transferred to the Interstate
          System.....................................................    65
        Interstate Route Corridor Legislation........................    67
        Mill Closure Due to Federal Timber Supply....................    68
        National Policy of Forest Management and Wildlife Press
          Release....................................................    71
        Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR)..........................    73
        RFS Congressional and EPA letters............................    75
        Safe Routes Act..............................................    79
        Sustainable Forestry Initiative Statement....................    83

                SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY'S ROLE IN CLIMATE SOLUTIONS

                                  ----------

                         WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
                   Committee on Small Business,
                           Subcommittee on Underserved,
                  Agricultural, and Rural Business Development,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in
    Room 2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jared Golden
    [chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
        Present: Representatives Golden, Carter, Delgado, Williams,
    Hagedorn, Stauber, and Salazar.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Good morning, everyone. I call this
    hearing to order.
        And, without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare
    a recess at any time.
        I am going to begin in noting some important requirements.
    Let me first say that standing House and Committee rules and
    practice continue to apply during hybrid proceedings.
        All Members are reminded that they are expected to adhere
    to standing rules, including the rules of decorum. House
    regulations require Members to be visible through a video
    connection throughout the proceedings, so keep your cameras on.
    Also, please remember to remain muted until you are recognized,
    in order to minimize background noise. If you have to
    participate in another proceeding, exit this one and log back
    in later.
        In the event a Member encounters technical issues that
    prevent them from being recognized for their questioning, I
    will move to the next available Member of the same party, and I
    will recognize that Member at the next appropriate time slot,
    provided they have returned to the proceeding.
        For Members and staff physically present in the Committee
    room today, in accordance with the attending physician's most
    recent guidance, Members and staff who attend this hybrid
    hearing in person will be required to wear a mask in the
    hearing room. Furthermore, all Members and staff who have not
    been fully vaccinated must maintain 6-foot social distancing.
    With that said, Members will be allowed to briefly remove their
    masks if they have been recognized to speak. That includes
    those who are here with us testifying today, as well Mr. Dane.
        I will now do a quick brief opening statement, kind of
    brief; we will see.
        In the State of Maine, we are home to a strong logging and
    forest products industry, and it has been that way throughout
    our history. Thousands of Mainers make their living in the
    woods or in mills, making things out of wood fiber.
        The industry has faced tough times in recent decades for a
    variety of reasons, from trade policies, outsourcing of jobs,
    demand slumps, and more. The loggers and other forest products
    workers, many of them small businesses, love what they do, and
    they have kept at it as a way of making a good living and as a
    way of life.
        That is important because small businesses in the forest
    products industry and the sustainable forestry they practice in
    Maine are primed to play an important role in the growth of
    renewable energy in combatting climate change in the years to
    come. It is a great opportunity for small businesses in rural
    heavily forested States like Maine and for the communities that
    they call home.
        America's forests and woodlands are vast. These natural
    resources cover about a third of the country and nearly 90
    percent of my State. These forests house diverse wildlife,
    improve air and water quality, sequester carbon dioxide, and
    provide critical resources for the U.S. and countries
    worldwide. Sustainable forestry seeks to manage forests to
    support the natural forest resources and ecosystem services we
    need now and in the future. These practices include protecting
    forests from wildfire, pests, and diseases, and preserving
    forests.
        I am proud to say my home State of Maine has many
    landowners and businesses that use these practices. We have a
    healthy forest as a result.
        Sustainable forestry can also help combat the impact of
    climate change, which has already begun to hurt forest health
    across the country. Unpredictable temperature changes, drought,
    fire, and invasive pests pose a fundamental threat to our
    beloved woodlands.
        Fortunately, sustainable forestry can maintain and restore
    carbon sequestration in forests, helping to fight climate
    change and keep our forests intact. The people doing this
    sustainable forestry are often small businesses. As I said,
    they are logging operators, forest products companies, biomass
    facilities, and many more. These are folks who create jobs and
    keep their local economies moving, while keeping our forests
    healthy and contributing to efforts to mitigate climate change.
        And as we are seeing, the market for the products that
    sustainable forestry produces is full of potential. Woody
    biomass, such as waste from logging and milling, can be used in
    industrial applications to produce steam and electricity,
    reducing the use of fossil fuels. Cross-laminated timber is
    being used in buildings in the U.S. and across the world. And
    innovative new forest products hit the market every year.
        Keeping our forests healthy helps to promote
    sustainability, address climate change, and ensure that small
    businesses and workers in rural areas share in the economic
    benefits.
        As Congress looks to address and mitigate the negative
    sides of climate change and bolster American small businesses
    with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and other legislation,
    we should support industries that help on both fronts.
        I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how
    policies can be put together here in Congress that will help
    them to be successful businesses, as businessowners, that will
    help them to continue to make a living the way that they choose
    and enjoy while also taking part in good sustainable forestry
    that makes for a healthy forest.
        I would now like to yield to Mr. Stauber who is--I am
    sorry, I am not yielding to Mr. Stauber for opening statements;
    rather, recognizing Ranking Member Hagedorn for his opening
    statement.
        And it is a real pleasure to be here with you today. Thanks
    for joining us. And I was very glad to find out you would be
    attending this morning.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. I thank you, Chairman. Appreciate you holding
    this hearing. And I look forward to the witnesses' accounts.
    You could have yield to Mr. Stauber. He is quite an expert on
    these issues, and I look forward to hearing some of his
    comments in just a little bit.
        Minnesota, like many places around the country, home to
    some beautiful forests and provide us incredible scenery, but
    also some awesome products that we use every day and we rely on
    every day. And this hearing is a lot about how we can help
    small businesses to continue to provide those types of products
    to the American people. And let's face it, there are distinct
    similarities in the economic challenges facing small businesses
    in any rural economy, whether it be agriculture, forestry,
    mining, or whatever sector. All rural economies are vital and
    important to the health of our country, and forest product
    sector is no different.
        Forest products make up about 1.5 percent of the total U.S.
    economy and contribute about 5 percent of America's total
    manufacturing output. That is quite large when you think about
    it. And for many rural States, timber is the economic
    cornerstone contributing a substantial amount of employment
    income.
        The timber provides higher than average wages, a variety of
    opportunities for employment, manufacturing sales, and a host
    of other economic opportunities, all contributing to a robust
    and dynamic rural forest economy.
        Rural forest economies depend on the tireless efforts of
    small businesses executing forest management practices day in
    and day out. Historically, the timber industry has--primarily
    consists of small, multigenerational, family-owned businesses
    with less than 20 employees. People would think they are
    actually probably big companies. Not so. The margins generated
    by these businesses are slim. Just 1 to 3 percent on average.
    And they assume millions of dollars in bank loans for expensive
    logging equipment on top of daily operating needs.
        So, you know, there is a lot at risk, a lot at play. Our
    small businesses are on the hook, and still those margins are
    very small. We have to do what we can to help.
        This places significant financial pressure on small
    businesses to harvest timber year-round. Unfortunately, current
    events have exacerbated the economic challenges these small
    businesses are already facing in this industry. The COVID-19
    pandemic shuttered schools, offices, and other industries
    reliant on paper. Pandemic-related closures of essential links
    and forestry supply chain, such as mills and other wood
    consumers, have placed timber harvesters and haulers in a vise,
    threatening their incomes.
        Compounding the problem are recent increases in operational
    expenses due to skyrocketing inflation, such as the rising cost
    of fuel, which has culminated in a 10 to 40 percent loss in
    revenue for many small businesses compared to the same
    timeframe in 2019.
        Small businesses in the timber industry are also grappling
    with significant, longer-term economic consequences stemming
    from the recent heavy wildfire activity. Small businesses lost
    valuable logging equipment, suffered from idle operations, and
    saw their incomes go up literally in smoke as millions of acres
    of revenue-generating timber were badly burned or damaged.
    These losses will be felt for generations, as it takes decades
    for lands to be rehabilitated and new growth to mature for
    harvest.
        Congress must work in bipartisan fashion to help better
    serve the forestry industry. One bill out there, H.R. 2612, the
    RESTORE Act, introduced by my friend, Congressman Doug LaMalfa
    of California, would allow for landscape sale of management
    projects to give foresters a more reliable access to federal
    timber, which often gets tied up with unnecessary litigation.
    This is especially important to the countless number of
    foresters who depend on a reliable source of federal timber and
    serve as partners in the Forest Service efforts to properly
    manage our forestlands to prevent fires.
        Congressman LaMalfa offered the RESTORE ACT as an amendment
    to the agriculture bill. I was there and voted for it, but
    unfortunately it was blocked by the majority.
        To close, I would like to highlight just one more challenge
    facing small businesses in the American forestry industry,
    namely, its aging and declining workforce. The Bureau of Labor
    Statistics projects that over 7,000 openings for logging
    workers, on average for each year over the next decade--so
    7,000 jobs open each year for--during this next decade. This
    logging has been characterized as difficult, dirty, dangerous,
    and even declining. However, the adoption of modern technology
    is attempting to disrupt this perception, creating a more high-
    tech working environment from qualified and skilled tradesmen
    to mechanical engineers.
        I hope from the testimony of our esteemed panel we will
    learn more about how we can reignite interest in this noble
    profession, grasp a better understanding of the economic
    realities, and try to have some good government policies in
    order to further their businesses.
        With that, I yield back.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
        I would like to take a moment to explain how the hearing
    will now proceed. Each witness has 5 minutes to provide a
    statement, and each Committee Member will have 5 minutes for
    questions. Please ensure that your microphone is on when you
    begin speaking and that you return to mute when finished.
        We will now quickly introduce our witnesses.
        Our first witness is Mr. Dana Doran, executive director of
    the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine. Prior to
    representing Maine's independent logging contractors, he served
    with both public and private organizations, including the U.S.
    Department of Labor, the Maine Department of Labor, Central
    Maine Power Company, and Kennebec Valley Community College.
        Thank you for joining us today, Dana.
        Our second witness is Dr. Adam Daigneault--you will have to
    forgive me if I mispronounce this, sir--associate professor of
    Forest Policy and Economics at the University of Maine. He is
    the head of the UMaine Forest Policy and Economics Lab. His
    research focuses on a wide range of issues, including
    freshwater management, climate change mitigation and
    adaptation, and assessing the socioeconomic impacts of
    environmental policy on the natural resource sectors.
        Thank you for joining us today.
        And I can tell you they do amazing work, the University of
    Maine, and they are great partners with folks like the logging
    contractors and the forest products industry in the State.
        Our third witness is Mr. Mark Thibodeau, regional manager
    for ReEnergy Biomass Operations in Maine. ReEnergy's bioenergy
    facilities transform sustainably sourced woody biomass, other
    wood waste, and other organic residues into renewable clean
    energy that provides power to thousands of homes and businesses
    in Maine. Mr. Thibodeau is a lifelong Mainer and a graduate of
    the Maine Maritime Academy.
        Thanks for joining us today.
        And Mr. Stauber will now introduce the minority witness.
        Mr. STAUBER. Well, thank you, Chairman Golden and Ranking
    Member Hagedorn, for your leadership on this Committee. It has
    been wonderful to work with you.
        You know, northern Minnesota is blessed to have a rich
    forest landscape and a robust logging and milling industry,
    acting as a keystone of our State's economic engine. Therefore,
    I look forward to the discussion ahead of us today on the role
    of small business and forest management and carbon
    sequestration.
        First of all, forest management, and especially logging,
    means solutions. Forest management is a solution to preventing
    and mitigating wildfires. Forest management is a solution to
    ensuring sustainable public lands. Forest management is a
    solution in facilitating recreation. Forest management is a
    solution for economic development and job creation. And forest
    management is a solution to sequestration of carbon.
        And all of these solutions through forest management is
    driven by the small business community. In my district and
    nationwide, tens of thousands of loggers work in private,
    county, State, and federally owned forests, creating jobs and
    finding solutions. So let's be clear, so-called climate
    solutions are impossible without logging and forest management.
        For example, in Minnesota and throughout the nation, our
    loggers plant three trees for every one harvested. As we all
    know, these living trees sequester carbon and, towards the end
    of their lifecycle, create more jobs. On the other hand, a dead
    tree that falls into the woods isn't just a proverb; it emits
    carbon into the atmosphere and provides fuel for wildfires,
    multiplying its carbon intensity.
        Our forests sequester 15 percent of American's carbon each
    year. But this is impossible without the proactive management
    and reforestation efforts of small logging companies throughout
    our nation. However, our logging businesses are discouraged due
    to this administration's mounting crisis and poor policymaking.
        And here are several examples. Transportation fuel costs
    are up exponentially. Why? This administration opted to ban
    domestic oil and gas development and instead rely on OPEC to
    provide the fuels our small business truckers need to move the
    product to market. Skyrocketing energy prices and economic
    shutdowns endanger mills, meaning fewer markets for logs and
    timber products. Passage of big land bills and amendments that
    take federal lands completely offline mean our loggers can't
    proactively manage our forests, they can't clear dead trees,
    and they can't help to prevent wildfires.
        Furthermore, older loggers are aging out of this
    profession. And because there is more land offline and fewer
    markets than ever before, the younger generation doesn't see
    the promise of those future logging jobs.
        Burdensome regulations for public land management, coupled
    with lawsuit after lawsuit from activist groups, complicate
    project permitting and tie up projects in legal costs.
        Moreover, this administration's nominee to lead the Bureau
    of Land Management endangers the lives of loggers. In Idaho,
    with tree spiking, a form of eco-terrorism, illustrating
    further hostility to these small business loggers. I don't know
    of a way to discourage logging more than to nominate someone
    who willfully put lives of loggers at stake as a leader of one
    of our largest land management agencies.
        So in order for responsible forest management to continue,
    we need to support policies that encourage instead of
    discourage logging. We need cheap, reliable energy for
    transportation and the powering of our mills. We need to
    expedite the process for compliance. We need to reform our
    broken NEPA process and keep loggers in the woods, not in the
    courtroom.
        We need to pass my own bill, the Healthy Forests for
    Hunters Act, which streamlines environmental reviews for timber
    projects on federal land that benefit wildlife habitat,
    simultaneously supporting forest management and boosting
    hunting opportunities nationwide. And we need to vote against
    land packages and amendments that halt responsible management.
        We need to encourage loggers to grow into the profession
    with robust workforce--with a robust workforce, pipelines, and
    administrators of land management agencies that aren't a threat
    to our small business and our logging community.
        If we do these things, we will empower our small business
    loggers and truckers to do what they do best, which is manage
    our forests, find solutions, including climate solutions.
        With all that said, I am pleased to introduce a constituent
    of mine as the Republican witness today. Scott Dane currently
    serves as the executive director of the American Loggers
    Council, which represents nearly 10,000 small businesses and
    50,000 employees and spans 30 States. Prior to this role, Scott
    served as executive director of the Minnesota Associated
    Contract Loggers and Truckers, our State's association
    representing the small businesses that play a key role in
    northern Minnesota's economy.
        There are few who can speak with more authority than Scott
    on timber and transportation. As he tells us in his opening
    remark, our loggers are key to forest health and a thriving
    economy. As a once-in-a-half-a-century wildfire raged across
    northern Minnesota, the loggers Scott represents played a key
    role in creating fire breaks and working to mitigate the
    damage.
        Scott, thank you for your advocacy, and thank you to the
    loggers for their hard work, and their families. I look forward
    to your testimony.
        Mr. Chair, and I yield back.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much.
        I am now going to go to our witness testimony. And we will
    begin with Mr. Doran, who is recognized for 5 minutes.

    STATEMENTS OF MR. DANA DORAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROFESSIONAL
    LOGGING CONTRACTORS OF MAINE, AUGUSTA, ME; DR. ADAM DAIGNEAULT,
    ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FOREST POLICY AND ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY
      OF MAINE, ORONO, ME; MR. MARK THIBODEAU, REGIONAL MANAGER,
     REENERGY STRATTON LLC, CARRABASSETT VALLEY, ME; AND MR. SCOTT
     DANE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN LOGGER COUNCIL, GILBERT, MN

                        STATEMENT OF DANA DORAN

        Mr. DORAN. Good morning, Chairman Golden, Ranking Member
    Hagedorn, and Members of the Committee on Small Business,
    Subcommittee on Underserved, Agricultural, and Rural
    Development. My name is Dana Doran, and I am the executive
    director of the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine.
        The PLC of Maine is the voice of independent logging and
    associated trucking contractors throughout the State of Maine.
    Our organization was formed in 1995 to provide contractors with
    a voice in a rapidly changing forest industry. I appreciate the
    opportunity to speak before you today.
        As of 2017, logging and trucking contractors in Maine
    employed over 3,900 people directly and were indirectly
    responsible for the creation of an additional 5,400 jobs. This
    employment and the investments that contractors make contribute
    more than $620 million to our State's economy each year. Our
    membership, which includes about 210 contractor Members,
    employs over 2,500 people and is responsible for 80 percent of
    Maine's annual timber harvest.
        Thank you very much again for providing me the opportunity
    to testify on behalf of our membership in the state regarding
    sustainable forestry's role in climate solutions. Thanks as
    well for recognizing the work of our national partner with the
    American Loggers Council and having Mr. Dane before you today.
        Whether it is here in Maine or across the United States,
    the timber harvesting community is a vital part of the
    responsible management of our nation's forests, as well as a
    vital partner in creating solutions for preservation of our
    climate.
        Many on this Committee might find it odd for a trade
    association that represents loggers and truckers in the state,
    typically a conservative group, to stand before you today to
    discuss how timber harvesting can be part of the solution and
    not part of the problem as it relates to climate change. With
    that in mind, I can say with great honesty that this perception
    is not reality when it comes to Maine's logging and trucking
    community.
        Over the last 20 years, we have learned to recognize and
    prepare for our role in climate mitigation through our work on
    the ground. We have been accustomed to wildly changing weather
    patterns, mud seasons that extend not just weeks but months,
    and the influence of invasive species and pests in the forest.
    As a result, the timber harvesting community has been required
    to adapt quickly.
        Two decades ago, our Members could work between 46 and 52
    weeks a year. Mud season was restricted to the months of April
    and May, but now, our members are limited to work between 38
    and 44 weeks per year. It is clear to Maine's legacy industry
    that climate and weather patterns have indeed changed, and this
    change is adding cost and lowering profitability.
        During the same time, there has been an ad hoc approach to
    both technology and public policy. While well intended public
    policy changes for the respective mandates have brought about
    positive change on one side, I can tell you that they have had
    a negative impact upon our industry.
        One primary example of this is the use of tier 4 engines,
    which has been mandated by both Congress and the federal
    government. While the technology has been positive in terms of
    curbing emissions, and we have fully adopted it, it has also
    added cost in terms of 25 to 50 percent to every piece of
    equipment used in this industry over the last 10 years.
        Loggers and truckers are price takers and have no ability
    to charge more for the work that they do. And so it is our
    opinion that changes like this can have a positive impact, but
    you have got to take into consideration the negative impacts at
    the same time. Loggers and truckers were never included in the
    discussions that took place in Congress related to this policy
    change, and, therefore, we just ask that going forward we are
    included for any future changes that take place.
        From a state perspective, I would like to touch upon what
    Maine has done in terms of a leadership role. Our current
    Governor, Governor Janet Mills, has created a climate council
    as well as a forest carbon task force. I have been a Member of
    both the climate council as well as the forest carbon task
    force over the last two years.
        In terms of the Mills administration climate action plan,
    it has been very obvious that forests are part of a carbon
    storage and climate mitigation strategy, especially timber
    harvesting contractors. But, there must be incentives to
    promote high-quality, on-the-ground performance by loggers and
    investment in low-impact harvesting equipment. To achieve both
    goals, contractors must work to reduce emissions and minimize
    impacts, but there must be financial incentives to do so.
        Here in Maine, we have something called the Direct Link
    Loan Program, which has been funded by U.S. EPA water quality
    funding. It has been a help to lower the cost of harvesting
    equipment, but at the same time we don't have enough funding.
    And I would ask this Committee to consider including more
    funding for that program and making it a statewide--excuse me,
    a nationwide program.
        Lastly, our Master Logger Program, which we created here in
    the State of Maine back in the year 2000, which is the world's
    only third-party certification program for logging contractors,
    has now been adopted in 19 other States and has been adopted in
    three other foreign countries and is on target to expand to an
    additional three other foreign countries in the future. It is
    similar to the Forest Stewardship Council as well as in
    addition to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
        And I would ask that Congress take a hard, fast look at
    this and try to adopt it for federal agencies, federal forests.
    We would like to see the federal government actually adopt it
    as a requirement for working on federal forests, not just
    forest management standards with SFI and FSC, but also look at
    third-party certification for timber harvesting contractors at
    the same time.
        In my written testimony today, you will see the benefits of
    the Master Logger Program, where it has been adopted, why it is
    so important, and why third-party certification of logging
    companies and not just training for loggers is more important
    in the long run.
        So, with that, I think I have come to the end of my
    testimony. I am happy to answer any questions at the end of the
    hearing by any Members.
        And, again, I would like to thank Congressman Golden and
    Ranking Member Hagedorn for inviting me today and participating
    before the Committee. Thanks very much. Appreciate your time.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
        Dana, you got to see if you can screen-share some photos of
    me on some of the equipment up there for the Members down here,
    driving around, you know, learning a thing or two.
        But it is a great program he was talking about. We will
    have more time to talk about it later.
        Next up--I am not going to do you the disservice of
    butchering your last name. Adam, you are up. And you can call
    me Jared anytime.
        You are still on mute.

                      STATEMENT OF ADAM DAIGNEAULT

        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. My apologies.
        All right. Thank you, Chairman Jared Golden, Ranking Member
    Hagedorn, and Members of this Subcommittee, for holding this
    hearing today and the opportunity to testify on this important
    topic. My name is Dr. Adam Daigneault, or Daigneault--as our
    namesake comes from your hometown of Lewiston, Jared--and I am
    an associate professor of Forest Policy and Economics here at
    University of Maine. I have been working on issues related to
    forest management economics and policy for nearly two decades.
        Forests across the globe are highly valued for their
    diverse ecosystem services, including timber, fiber, and fuel
    resources, carbon sequestration, freshwater habitat,
    recreation, and cultural values.
        As noted by Member Hagedorn's opening remarks, across the
    U.S., forest-related businesses support at least 3 million jobs
    and generate around 5 percent of total manufacturing GDP.
    However, forest resources across the country face increasing
    pressures from shifting markets, land use change, policy, and
    climate change.
        U.S. forest systems, ecosystems, and the wood they produce
    are a large carbon sink. Our forest sector removes more than 12
    percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. And while forest
    carbon stocks are increasing in this country, it is uncertain
    if this trend will persist with changing socioeconomic and
    climatic conditions. Thus, forests have an immense potential to
    help mitigate climate change if landowners are provided
    adequate incentives and technical assistance.
        Forest carbon is a low-cost climate solution, and
    nationwide sequester rates could double with the proper
    incentives. For example, Maine's forest and wood products
    already remove about 70 percent of the State's annual
    greenhouse gas emissions, expect to be a huge contributor to
    achieving their net-zero emissions target by 2045.
        Sustainable forest management and harvests are key to
    enhancing forest carbon sinks. Without this, forests grow
    slower, are less resilient to climate change, and sequester
    carbon at lower rates. And a wide range of sustainable forest
    management practices should be used to promote climate
    solutions while maintaining timber supply. These include
    quickly regenerating sites with climate change resistant
    species, reducing the risk of loss to natural disturbance,
    conducting treatments to increase growth, and using efficient,
    climate-friendly harvesting practices.
        Markets are really key to maintaining the health and
    sustainability of our forests. Finding new uses for wood and
    supporting rural communities to ensure vibrant workforce can
    improve forest health. Robust and stable timber markets enable
    to carefully plan harvest of trees that allow forests to have
    appropriate stocking levels, balanced age classes, and species
    diversity.
        Continued research and development into new and more
    efficient uses of wood are critical to supporting our rural
    economies. These include wood bioenergy, biofuels, mass timber,
    nanocellulose-based products, and bioplastics. The University
    of Maine is researching many of these innovations thanks to
    grants from the USDA, DOE, NSF, and more.
        As noted, markets play a key role also in keeping forests
    as forests. Land is a commodity, and low-value land risks being
    converted to alternative uses. We need to promote markets for
    all grades of wood and forest uses that will help maintain or
    increase its value, incentivize management, and reduce
    deforestation.
        Timber harvesting is necessary to meet both societal needs
    and mitigate climate change. Nearly 20 percent of our forest
    carbon is in harvested wood products, which can be substituted
    for emissions-intensive materials like steel and concrete.
    Incentivizing practices that maintain our increased harvest and
    carbon will be a win-win for society and the climate.
        Wood-based bioenergy is part of the climate solution.
    Bioenergy markets increase forest value and incentivize removal
    of wood that otherwise dies and releases carbon. Putting this
    to use can reduce fossil fuel emissions. A federal renewable
    energy standard for sustainably harvested biomass would improve
    low-grade wood markets.
        Several federal programs could be utilized to incentivize
    forest management and enhance carbon sinks. These include the
    USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service programs like
    EQIP and CSP, and the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Stewardship,
    Forest Legacy, and Forest Inventory Analysis programs, to name
    a few. Enhancing these programs can improve forest conditions
    and wood utilization, thereby increasing both carbon stocks and
    the flow of timber products.
        Additional funding must be devoted to reducing the risk of
    wildfire and other natural disturbances. Maintaining or
    increasing federal tax incentives, like the management and
    reforestation deductions, will incentivize landowners to
    actively manage their land for timber, carbon, and other co-
    benefits. We must continue to support research and economic
    development in the forest products and land management sectors
    through federal grants from the USDA, DOE, NSF, EDA, and
    others.
        The opportunities and challenges for sustainably managing
    our forests for timber, carbon, and other ecosystem services
    are notably complex. Given the recent changes to our forest
    ecosystems in the wood products sector, there is more need than
    ever to employ the very best science to inform decision-making.
    We must continue to research and promote opportunities that
    simultaneously improve the resilience of our forests and the
    rural economies and people who depend on this key natural
    resource.
        Thank you again for the opportunity to speak on this topic.
    I invite you all to visit Maine and see all the great things
    that are going on at our universities and working forests to
    implement sustainable forest management and grow our forest
    economy.
        And, Representative Golden, I look forward to seeing you
    again in December at the Millinocket Marathon.
        Thank you.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, Professor Daigneault. Did I get
    that one better? Getting closer?
        So, actually, growing up, I always wondered why my great-
    grandmother called me ``Jerod''. And they came down out of like
    Chicoutimi, to the Lewiston area. But the French-speaking
    tradition stopped with my mother's generation, at least with
    me, but it sounded familiar, Lewiston area.
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Yeah, it is the same for me as well, but--
    --
        Chairman GOLDEN. Absolutely. By the way, I am not sure that
    I have a half marathon in me. That was a brutal race. That was
    a cold day. And I had a good time, and it was for a great
    cause. And you want to talk about an old mill town, very, very
    much related to this.
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Yeah. And it is an excellent way to--you
    know, innovative ways that people are trying to, you know, prop
    up the rural communities.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Yeah, that is right. Absolutely. Thanks,
    Professor.
        Next, we will hear from Mr. Thibodeau.

                      STATEMENT OF MARK THIBODEAU

        Mr. THIBODEAU. All right. Good morning, Chairman Jared
    Golden, Ranking Member Jim Hagedorn, and Members of the
    Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before
    you to discuss sustainable forestry's role as a climate
    solution. I will be speaking specifically to wood energy as a
    climate solution this morning.
        My name is Mark Thibodeau. I am a lifelong Mainer, and I am
    a graduate of Maine Maritime Academy with a degree in marine
    systems engineering. I live in Maine's Second Congressional
    District, and I serve as regional manager for the energy
    biomass operations. I have managed five biomass power plants in
    Maine in the course of my career as well as five in California.
        In Maine, ReEnergy operates two biomass power facilities,
    both in the Second Congressional District. We operate a 39-
    megawatt facility in Livermore Falls and a 48-megawatt facility
    in Stratton. We use sustainably harvested forest and mill
    residue as fuel to generate baseloaded renewable electricity. I
    like to stress the baseloaded portion of that.
        The Stratton facility supplies--also supplies and provides
    electricity directly to the adjacent lumber mill. Our wood ash
    from the Stratton facility is also used by more than a hundred
    Maine farms as a soil amendment for balancing soil pH and
    enhancing nutrient levels, and has also been approved as an
    organic fertilizer.
        ReEnergy also operates a 60-megawatt biomass power facility
    in New York, the ReEnergy Black River facility, which is
    located inside the fence at the U.S. Army installation of Fort
    Drum. That plant provides all the post's electricity from
    behind the meter, creating inner security and resiliency.
        And, lastly, we operate a 50-megawatt Albany Green Energy
    facility that is a 50-megawatt biomass heat-and-power facility
    located in Albany, Georgia. This facility supplies electricity
    to Georgia Power and steam to Proctor & Gamble and a nearby
    Marine Corps Logistics Base.
        I would like to discuss how biomass energy supports
    sustainable forestry. Sustainable forestry is an important
    contributor to mitigating climate change and reducing the risk
    of wildfire. When forested lands are maintained and harvested
    in a sustainable way, the forest continues to grow and consume
    atmospheric carbon.
        Wood markets and wood utilization are essential to forest
    maintenance. Without an outlet for owners to sell their
    harvested wood, the owners are more likely to sell the land for
    other uses.
        Biomass product is an important component of the larger
    wood market. After the higher value fiber is sold to make
    lumber, furniture, or paper, the landowner is left with lower
    value fiber like tops, the limbs, and thinnings that cannot
    easily be made into other wood products. When these leftovers
    or residues are sold to a biomass power facility, the landowner
    is able to further capitalize on that harvest, and the unusable
    fibers go toward generating baseloaded renewable energy.
        The biomass power facilities are located primarily in rural
    areas with active forests and/or agricultural economies. In
    some areas, biomass power facilities are actively involved in
    the reduction of catastrophic wildfires by repurposing forest
    debris that is very hazardous during wildfire season.
        Our fuel suppliers follow best management practices that
    ensure sustainable forest management. In all of our
    communities, forest growth greatly exceeds removals.
        What are some of the carbon benefits of biomass? Energy
    generated from biomass is recognized as having carbon benefits
    by most scientists as well as many environmental organizations
    and regulators. This is because the carbon released by biomass
    power generation is already part of the carbon cycle
    circulating between the atmosphere and the biosphere. Thus,
    like other types of renewable energy, including wind, solar,
    geothermal, and hydro, biomass energy production displaces
    greenhouse gas emissions that would have been produced had that
    energy been generated from fossil fuels.
        Even though the combustion of biomass generates biogenic
    emissions of CO2 on a gross basis, when the lifecycle benefits
    of biomass are calculated, the net emissions for biomass are
    considered neutral or negligible, depending on the type of
    biomass. My written testimony provides much more information on
    the carbon benefits of biomass.
        With respect to federal policy issues, we are active
    Members of the Biomass Power Association, and it often seems to
    us that biomass power is the least understood renewable energy
    resource. We have been working for years to urge the
    Environmental Protection Agency to implement the electricity
    portion of the renewable fuel standard and activate its biomass
    pathways, for an example, and to address definitional
    interpretations of the term ``biomass'' in the Renewable Fuel
    Standard.
        Without equitable policy support, it can become difficult
    for biomass to serve as a robust part of the country's
    renewable energy portfolio. We have been trying to address tax
    inequities that prioritize the growth of other renewable
    technologies at the expense of biomass and other baseloads.
        Regarding the role of biomass in underserved communities,
    there are many underserved communities across the country that
    rely on forestry for income, with biomass being part of their
    revenue stream. For example, Native Americans are the largest
    owners of commercial forestry resource in the United States,
    controlling 16 million acres of forestland. Some of our fuel at
    our facilities here in Maine comes from Tribal land managed by
    the Penobscot nation. My written testimony provides additional
    examples of underserved communities involved in the forestry
    sector.
        So, with that, I appreciate the opportunity to provide
    testimony today to the Committee, and I thank you for your
    public service. Please feel free to contact me at anytime with
    questions or concerns.
        And as always, Representative Golden, you are always
    welcome for a plant tour, as well as any other Members.
        Thank you.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. And now we will hear from Mr.
    Dane.

                        STATEMENT OF SCOTT DANE

        Mr. DANE. Chairman Golden, Ranking Member Hagedorn, and
    esteemed Committee Members of the Subcommittee on Underserved,
    Agricultural, and Rural Business Development, I appear before
    you today on behalf of the American Loggers Council, a
    nonprofit timber industry trade association representing 30
    States, to address the role that forest industry performs in
    supporting sustainable forestry and the contribution that
    healthy managed forests provide in addressing climate issues.
        Put simply, loggers ensure healthy forests. As a Minnesota
    DNR commissioner told a prior governor, Governor, the Minnesota
    DNR doesn't manage the forests; the loggers do it for us.
    Public and private land managers cannot accomplish their
    healthy forest objectives without loggers. Healthy forests
    depend upon a healthy, stable, sustainable timber industry. You
    can have both, but you cannot have one, healthy forests,
    without the other--loggers.
        The logging industry represents jobs in rural America.
    Although the timber resource continues to increase, logging
    capacity continues to decrease. This is the result of minimal
    profit margins, high capital investment requirements, forest
    products, mill closures--or forest product mill closure due to
    shifting markets, including the COVID pandemic, for traditional
    forest products such as paper, and workforce development
    challenges.
        For the most part, loggers have not seen much, if any,
    increase in the delivered price for wood sold to mills in the
    last 10 years. While they are in the same period, equipment
    costs have increased 30 percent, insurance premiums have
    increased 20 percent, and, recently, fuel prices have increased
    50 percent. When lumber prices skyrocketed this year, most
    loggers did not see any benefit, and in some cases actually
    experienced price cuts.
        From a workforce development perspective, the timber
    industry workforce is aging, with the median age being well
    over 50 years old. The workforce is predicted to continue to
    decline by 14 percent over the next 8 years.
        Logging is difficult and dangerous work, but those risks
    should not reflect it in the wages and benefits paid. Logging
    is not competitive with other comparable industries, and
    younger workers are not entering the logging industry at the
    rate that older workers are leaving.
        One of the greatest challenges is transportation. There is
    not enough trucking capacity to meet the demand. Additionally,
    insurance rates in some regions are $10,000 to $15,000 per
    truck per year. Trucking is the weak link in the timber
    industry supply chain.
        The American Loggers Council has submitted a briefing paper
    as part of our full testimony that addresses these challenges,
    and proposes legislative and policy changes that would provide
    assistance in resolving some of these issues.
        However, this is about more than rural agricultural jobs.
    Healthy forests are vital to addressing climate change and,
    particularly, carbon sequestration. Nothing absorbs and stores
    more carbon than forests. That is why the global Trillion Tree
    Initiative was joined by the United States in recognition of
    the carbon sequestration role that trees provide.
        We need young, healthy, diverse, and growing forests, not
    overmature, dead, diseased, and dying trees, and certainly not
    burning forests. Older forests absorb and sequester two-thirds
    less carbon than younger forests. If we don't agree upon that,
    then the timber industry will have limited opportunity to
    contribute to sustainable forestry as part of carbon
    sequestration and climate solutions.
        Poor forest management does not create healthy forests, but
    instead negates the potentially positive benefits that would
    otherwise be achieved from sustainable forestry practices. This
    is evident in the increase in wildfires in the U.S. and around
    the world. Global wildfire carbon dioxide emissions are at
    record highs.
        The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the EU
    found that burning forests released 1.3 gigatons of carbon
    dioxide last month alone; the highest since the organization
    began measurements in 2003. The U.S. was a leading contributor.
    Scientists are concerned that areas with dense vegetation,
    including many of our national forests, have become the
    source--are becoming a source rather than a sink of greenhouse
    gases.
        A recent study that the U.S. Forest Service participated in
    acknowledged that a warming climate has extended the wildfire
    for obvious reasons. However, the study found that climate
    change accounts for just 14 percent of the influence of more
    destructive wildfires, while noting that live fuel was the
    largest factor accounting for 53 percent.
        Last May, I had the opportunity to fly over and survey the
    aftermath of wildfires in California. A video of the helicopter
    survey was produced and is included in my full testimony for
    the Congressional Record. If that video does not initiate an
    honest, science-based dialogue to develop a new national policy
    on forest management, wildfire mitigation, timber salvage, and
    restoration, nothing will.
        Sustainable forestry practiced and performed by the
    American timber and forest products industry is part of a
    solution in meeting the objectives of climate initiatives.
    However, it is entirely dependent on the rural jobs that the
    timber and forest products industries provide. The timber
    industry, healthy forests, and rural jobs are the climate
    solution.
        Thank you. I look forward to answering your questions.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you all very much for your opening
    statements here.
        We are going to get to the Q&A portion now, and I will go
    ahead and kick things off with my 5 minutes.
        I think both Mr. Dane and Doran talked a little bit about
    some of the pandemic-driven related struggles of the logging
    industry over the last year. And as you both know, no doubt the
    Maine delegation in particular, although we have certainly had
    allies here in Congress, to get additional support for loggers
    and logging truck drivers that have been struggling through the
    COVID-19 pandemic.
        Could you talk a little bit about how the COVID-19 pandemic
    impacted the timber industry and why relief was needed for
    these small businesses at the same time that consumers were
    seeing higher lumber prices? In addition, can you talk about
    the success to date of the program? I know they haven't closed
    out the applications, but what do you expect in regards to the
    overall success of the program? And what are you concerned
    about as you look forward over the next year?
        And I think we can start with Mr. Doran. Mr. Dane, if we
    have some time, you can comment.
        Mr. DORAN. Sure. I would be happy to. Thank you, Chairman
    Golden, Jared. And I do have photos of you. If you would like
    me to screen-share, I would be happy to put them up so there is
    actual proof of your work in the woods. I will look for your
    discretion on that.
        So in terms of your question, you know, starting with the
    pandemic and the impact. So in 2020, you know, we saw,
    basically, the pandemic start before it even came to the United
    States. As a result of the pandemic and its impact upon China
    and the Far East, we started to see markets start to close or
    be reduced as far back as January of 2020, and it just
    dissipated from there, between pulp and paper impacts, saw log
    products, obviously, disruption of demand paper products,
    whether it is in office buildings or restaurants, et cetera. In
    2020, our Members saw a drop of between 30 and 50 percent, and
    that has just compounded over the last 18 months.
        You alluded to what has happened with saw log markets. All
    of you read the headlines of sky-high lumber prices. I can tell
    you firsthand that here in the state, it wasn't a supply and
    demand issue. The log yards were full, and so there was a very
    high supply from the contractors that provide those solid log
    products to manufacturers. And then, obviously, demand was sky
    high. So it was not a simple supply and demand issue. Money
    literally just did not trickle down to the supply chain.
        So we have been hit by a double whammy, so to speak. We are
    very, very thankful for the work of our Maine delegation,
    especially Jared Golden and Senator Susan Collins, and the rest
    of our delegation, for providing the pandemic assistance for
    timber harvest, as in haulers, that was included in the omnibus
    appropriations bill that passed Congress back in December of
    2020, and finally hit the street by USDA in late July of this
    year.
        Maine has taken the lead with respect to applications in
    that program. We are nearing nearly 300 applications. So we are
    pleased to see that folks are taking advantage of it. We don't
    know yet, you know, how much they have applied for and how much
    of the $200 million is actually going to get to them.
        I will say this, the agricultural community and fishing
    community has seen nearly $30 billion of aid. The logging
    community, which has never had a handout or a hand up, so to
    speak, by the federal government is only going to get about
    $200 million nationwide. It is a pittance.
        You know, again, we are not looking for the federal
    government to bail out every contractor, but this funding is
    certainly going to help. But, you can tell by the impacts that
    I am giving you that it is not going to do a tremendous amount,
    but it is going to help those in need to get to the other side
    of this.
        So I will allow Mr. Dane to reflect nationally, but those
    are the impacts here in the State.
        Mr. DANE. Thank you, Chairman. Real quick, yeah, the--from
    my estimation to this point, the funding eligibility across our
    nation will exceed the $200 million appropriation, which is a
    testimony to the need for the funding that was out there and
    everything else.
        How did the pandemic impact the industry directly?
    Interestingly enough, Congressman Stauber's district had a mill
    announce a closure about 15 months ago directly related to the
    impacts of the drop and demand for paper products in the
    offices and schools and that type of thing and permanently
    closed that mill, as well as another mill in Wisconsin that
    permanently closed, that accounted for 20 percent of the timber
    consumption in Wisconsin alone. So it had direct and indirect
    impacts. The assistance has proven helpful.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Well, I am out of time, but I am going to
    just take a little bit of privilege. Any estimate at all on
    what the actual eligibility demand would look like if every
    logging contractor that needed help ended up getting some?
        Mr. DANE. Chairman Golden, yes, the U.S. Forest Service
    conducted a study of the financial impacts as a result of the
    pandemic and estimated just slightly over $1 billion. The
    American Loggers Council did a survey with a consultant that
    estimated a $1.8 billion negative impact directly resulting
    from the pandemic. So, yeah, those are a couple of estimates of
    the entire fiscal financial impact.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. I will certainly have another
    round of questions later.
        Mr. Hagedorn, you are recognized.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Dane, we will kind of stay with you. So listening to
    your testimony, it is clear that, as Congressman Stauber
    brought up, this forest management is very important. If we
    don't manage the forests properly, we are in big trouble on a
    number of fronts. And it seems interesting to me that a lot of
    times you get into States like California where they have a lot
    of fires and it doesn't seem to be that the forests are managed
    properly, and a lot of that is extreme environmentalists
    getting involved, either at the political level or at the
    grassroots level, and preventing people from going in there and
    basically cultivating the forest.
        I represent a farm area. I grew up on a farm. And, you
    know, forest products is just another crop. So I would have it
    over at the Agriculture Department and everything else.
        So it is kind of interesting that they don't let you go in
    and do what you need to do in order to protect the forests. And
    then when they burn down, they say, look at it, it is all
    climate change. But then according to your statistics, no, it
    is not. It is about 8 to 1 or 7 to 1, not doing proper
    management.
        So getting into it, though, you have lots of things going
    on that are cutting into your bottom line, driving up your
    costs; obviously, inflation, things of that nature, policies,
    and just bad government policies. I think there are some bad
    government policies on the horizon that might hurt your small
    businesses. We are looking at the majority party raising taxes
    again that may be making it more difficult for businesses to
    expense their items in current years and things of that nature.
        The tax reform bill that was passed under President Trump,
    I think, helped most of your Members. Would you not agree with
    that?
        Mr. DANE. Mr. Hagedorn, absolutely, I would agree with
    that. As Congressman Stauber mentioned, the margins are
    typically 1 to 3 percent. Any increase in taxes on this
    capital-intensive industry would cut into that. As marginal as
    it is, that in the industry cannot afford to absorb additional
    increases in expenses.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. You don't know of any Members that are asking
    for their taxes to be increased at this point, right?
        Mr. DANE. No, sir.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. Secondly, let's look at these big government
    items. You know, regulations at the federal level can affect
    you. Energy costs, you brought that up. And, you know, what is
    going on in the climate change arena, those things are going to
    drive up the cost of energy, make our energy less reliable.
    That can't help your bottom line.
        And then you get into some of these EPA requirements on
    your heavy equipment and trucks. And I think it was brought up
    by testimony in one of the others where you go from tier 3 to
    tier 4, and the difference might be this much, just this much
    more in trying to clean up the environment, but the cost is
    enormous to industries and driving up consumer costs.
        Can you address that a little bit?
        Mr. DANE. Well, my counterpart, Mr. Doran, did reference
    that, and he is correct. The cost of going to tier 4 has had a
    lot of unintended consequences, negative consequences, first
    and foremost, by adding tens of thousands of dollars to the
    prices of a truck alone or equipment, so that is a problem.
    Dealing with the servicing on those systems that tier 4
    requires, it brings out service technicians out that are
    driving more out to the equipment.
        So I think when you are taking all the indirect impacts, it
    would be marginal, at best, that there would be any
    environmental improvements associated with the tier 4
    equipment.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. And then you brought up a point about how
    important the trucking industry is to your industry or combined
    in many ways, and now you don't--you have a shortage of
    drivers, not enough trucks on the road at a time. My
    understanding is, at any one time in the United States, each
    day there might be a thousand big trucks on the side of the
    road because of these tier 4 requirements, and they just shut
    down and you have to get technicians out. There are no
    technicians, you know. A lot of these places are offering up
    $10,000 bonuses for technicians to start.
        One of the pieces of legislation that I have is the
    American Workforce Empowerment Act that says that if families
    have saved for college education for their kids, that they
    should be able to use that money, not just for 4-year college,
    but for technical school, certificate programs, the training
    for these types of things, you know. People are going to do the
    diagnostics on the truck and then the purchase of tools and
    equipment.
        Do you think that would be the type of legislation,
    anything to get more people in the trades and more people into
    the dirty jobs, as I think Mike Rowe refers to them?
        Mr. DANE. Mr. Hagedorn, absolutely, that is one of our
    biggest challenges. We are having a conference in Coeur
    d'Alene, Idaho, next week. One of the seminars is on workforce
    development. And my counterpart in Maine will be speaking on
    that, Mr. Doran. They developed a great program in Maine to
    enter the pipeline for workers in the timber industry.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. If we do have a second round, maybe we can
    talk with him a little bit more about that. Thank you.
        I yield back.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Next up, we will recognize Rep. Troy
    Carter from Louisiana.
        Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
        My question is for Dr. Daigneault. I am interested to hear
    more about the climate solutions that forest provides. Forests
    provide important ecosystems services such as sequestering
    carbon. Forests products, by their very nature, are comprised
    of carbon and durable wood products, storing carbon for years.
        As you know, the sustainability is an issue that is very
    important to me. I would love to hear your thoughts on what can
    be done and what else is happening in the area of bolstering
    climate solutions through our forestry.
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Yes. Thank you, Representative Carter. So
    some sort of big solutions that are often referred to when you
    think about utilizing forests are sort of three-tiered. So one
    is keeping forests as forests, so effort that we can put into
    conserve forests but not necessarily in a pure preservation
    perspective, but to ensure that it is not converted to
    alternative uses such as, you know, strip malls and things like
    that.
        Another one is to basically improve the forest management
    on forests that are already out there. So what can we do--and a
    lot of the things that we have discussed today is what can we
    do to incentivize landowners to get into the woods more, better
    treat the land that they have, and implement different
    practices to get what we call ideal stocking levels so that
    trees basically have space and resources to grow.
        And the third one is to basically take sort of marginal
    land that might be not best utilized and figure out how to
    reforest that area, to essentially expand the footprint that we
    can.
        All three of those are proving to be very cost effective if
    you sort of compare the level of sort of incentive that you
    might have to provide to a landowner relative to, you know,
    electrifying our transportation system or putting in solar
    panels or something like that.
        The key also is the healthier that we can get our forests
    by going in and managing and sort of freeing up space and
    allowing trees to grow faster, taller, wider, is that that will
    allow us also to basically utilize a higher proportion of the
    wood into what you noted as sort of durable wood products,
    right. And so the longer--the more--so the faster we can get
    trees to grow larger, taller, straighter, healthier, the more
    that we can basically convert that into 2 by 4s, furniture,
    other things that could be basically storing that carbon for
    decades, even when it is removed from the stump, thereby also
    allowing sort of the opportunity for the next generation of
    forests to sort of grow in its place and continue to sequester
    more carbon.
        Mr. CARTER. Let me just do a followup, Doc. My time is
    going to run out. But I just want to ask one follow-up question
    that--how do working forests differ from forests under
    conservation, and do they play different roles in terms of
    sustainability and climate solutions? What is the difference
    between the two and the roles they play?
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Sure. So in a place like Maine, Maine,
    about 20 percent of forests are actually under some sort of
    condition of what we would consider conservation. But in Maine,
    85 percent of that forest that is under conservation is
    actually also designated as what we would call working forests.
    So they might be owned by conservation groups or they might be
    actually, you know, owned by family forest companies that
    basically want to have their land conserved in the sense that
    they don't want it to be converted to alternative uses, but
    they still want to manage that land for timber products,
    wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water. And so they might
    take a slightly different perspective than say, you know, a
    pure commercial landowner to some degree, but they are still
    managing for multiple uses of which timber is a strong part of
    it.
        So we really have to be careful when we say
    ``conservation'' and not align that purely with preservation or
    not basically doing any sort of management or harvesting from
    that land. A lot of conserved forest is still what we would
    consider working forest.
        Mr. CARTER. And is there competition between the two? Is
    there a conflict there?
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Not necessarily. There might be that the
    landowners that have their land under conservation might have
    different objectives than what you might want to think of as a
    sort of pure commercial landowner or forestry company, but
    everyone tends to acknowledge that harvesting is part of the
    solution, right. But it is just part of one of many sort of
    suite of services that we can get from how we manage our land.
        The key is that we have to think about this from very much
    a landscape perspective and sort of commercial landowners,
    small family landowners, conservation landowners, they all can
    sort of work together to help get--sort of meet society's needs
    at large.
        Mr. CARTWRIGHT. Okay. I see my time is up. I yield. Thank
    you very much.
        Chairman GOLDEN. We will now recognize Representative Roger
    Williams from Texas 25.
        Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the
    witnesses for coming here today.
        And my first question is for Mr. Dane. As you know,
    forestry-related small businesses are crucial to providing jobs
    and revenue to our communities, and we have talked a lot about
    that today. When I talk to loggers and lumbermen back in Texas,
    I constantly hear concerns surrounding the labor shortage.
        Recently, I met with a second-generation, family-owned
    small business in your industry from my district who told me
    that they are struggling to keep up with current demand because
    of many of their workers have decided not to return to work and
    the X generations are joining in the forestry, and they are not
    doing that. So the federal government should be encouraging
    individuals to get back to the workforce rather than
    incentivizing them not to work and stay at home.
        So, Mr. Dane, can you speak more on how the labor shortage
    is affecting the small businesses that your organization
    represents? And, secondly, is there a specific policy that made
    the labor shortage worse in the last year and a half?
        Mr. DANE. Mr. Williams, thank you very much for the
    question. And I was just down in Texas a couple of months ago
    visiting with your timber industry down there. It is a great
    organization.
        Mr. WILLIAMS. It is a great State too, isn't it?
        Mr. DANE. Absolutely, sir. I have got a survey here that
    the American Loggers Council did in 2019, actually, before the
    pandemic, which references that 97 percent of those surveyed
    said it is virtually impossible to replace or add new hires to
    their operations. That is an ongoing problem that we have.
        Now, with the added--I will be honest with you. With the
    added unemployment benefits, I was talking to a logger in
    International Falls, Minnesota, that said he is going to have
    to give his guys a raise to offset the additional unemployment
    that they are receiving to entice them to come back to work. So
    it is a problem.
        Mr. WILLIAMS. Competition and access to capital play a
    fundamental role in our economy, and the government must not
    impede entrepreneurship and innovation but, rather, ensure that
    American small businesses can succeed and grow without
    unnecessary government interference, and you just touched on
    that. Paying people not to work is too much of an interference.
        Burdensome regulations have real impacts on small business
    owners and the communities who depend on them. I am a small
    business owner, have been for over 50 years, and I know how
    excessive regulations can hinder growth and competition. We
    work--I am in the car business. We work on the same margins you
    do, so any movement one way or the other is tough on the
    industry. And we do not need a top-down, one-size-fits-all
    approach, but, rather, a properly regulated economy that
    creates opportunity for everybody.
        So, again, is the logging industry properly regulated, do
    you think, and do you have concerns that the new focus on the
    green policy regulations will be harmful to the competitiveness
    and profitability of your Members?
        Mr. DANE. From a regulatory perspective, I am happy to say
    that at local, State, county levels, the regulation is not
    really excessive. But when you get to the federal level, it is
    extremely burdensome. The NEPA requirements and the ESA
    requirements have been weaponized by those that want to just
    stall and litigate national forest management plans.
        Mr. WILLIAMS. So you have all the regulations you need to
    deal with right now, don't you?
        Mr. DANE. We do not need any further regulations, Mr.
    Williams.
        Mr. WILLIAMS. All right. Thank you.
        Small businesses are finally beginning to recover from
    COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing they need is for Congress
    and President Biden to raise taxes. We have talked about that.
    Raising taxes in this time is crazy, and the infrastructure
    bills that Democrats are pushing forward and attempting to pass
    this week will raise the corporate tax rate and drive up
    inflation, making goods and services more expensive. That is
    the bottom line.
        Despite the White House claim that this will cost nothing,
    which is a complete lie in my mind, the cost will inevitably be
    passed on to individuals or businesses, and many businesses
    can't pass it on to individuals, so they have to eat it, and
    they have to let people off to pay for it. So increasing taxes
    will cause businesses to hire less people and invest less back
    in the economy.
        So, Mr. Dane, quickly, can you discuss how tax increases
    would impact the small businesses that you represent? And if
    taxes are increased and your margins remain the same, which
    probably would not be, would that mean passing the cost on to
    the consumer?
        Mr. DANE. Well, I would like to answer the last part of
    that question first. Loggers do not have the ability to pass on
    that cost to consumers. Loggers are paid based on what the
    mills determine, and as Mr. Doran referenced, dictate will be
    paid. And so it is one of the only industries in the country
    that I am aware of that you don't have the opportunity to tell
    your consumer what you are going to sell them the product for.
    They tell you what they are going to buy it for. So they don't
    have that opportunity.
        Second, these are small businesses, and some are
    corporations, so that increased corporate rate would directly
    impact these family businesses.
        Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you. Stay the course. There is help
    coming.
        I yield my time back.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
        I will now recognize Rep. Pete Stauber from Minnesota 8.
        Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much, Mr. Dane, for appearing
    here. I am going to put you on the spot. My good friend from
    Texas just says Texas is a great State. Texas or Minnesota?
        Mr. DANE. Minnesota in the summertime.
        Mr. STAUBER. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here.
        You know, we talked about the loggers and our truckers at
    the forefront of responsible management. You know, how is the
    skyrocketing cost of fuels for transportation and energy affect
    a small logging and trucking businesses?
        And I will just share with you. I was at a logging site
    just west of Grand Rapids, you know, Rajala Timber, and they
    talked about the cost for fuel and energy to run the machines.
    How has that affected--how is it affecting the industry and the
    ability to move forward?
        Mr. DANE. I will give you a quick example, Congressman
    Stauber. You know, Scheff Logging in Marcell, Minnesota, I
    think their fuel expenses are about a million dollars a year,
    maybe 1.2, 1.3. You add 50 percent--yeah, 50 percent increase
    in fuel cost right there, you are talking a half a million
    dollars for one company alone. So it definitely is a burden to
    the industry and one that is unfortunate that has occurred in
    the last 8 months.
        Mr. STAUBER. You know, also in your testimony, Scott, you
    discussed the Trillion Trees Initiative, which is embodied in a
    bill introduced by my colleague, Representative Westerman. How
    do the reforms in that bill, such as streamlining NEPA, make it
    easier for your industry to do its job and, in turn, support
    forest health and carbon sequestration?
        Mr. DANE. Well, let's go back to the Trillion Tree
    Initiative, which is a global initiative to plant a trillion
    trees around the world to, you know, absorb more carbon. It
    makes a lot of sense. When it comes to the NEPA reforms that
    are necessary--that are critically necessary, that are
    hampering forest management at the federal level, I was at a
    meeting, and I think they were talking about at one time a NEPA
    report was about 75 pages long. Now it is 600, 700 pages long.
        I was out there in California. We took a helicopter tour of
    the aftermath of the wildfires in May. We were up there for 6
    hours. We toured 3 million acres of burned land--3 million
    acres of burned land. And when you look down and you see what
    is going on in privately owned and managed land, they are
    salvaging the timber, they are restoring the land, they are
    replanting on there. If you look at the adjacent federally
    managed timber, nothing is happening. No salvage is going on.
    No reclamation is going on. And that is all because of all the
    NEPA requirements that just are used to hamper forest
    management.
        Mr. STAUBER. Mr. Dane, if you had one request from the EPA
    for your industry, maybe two requests, what would they be? How
    can the EPA help your industry with decisions?
        Mr. DANE. Congressman Stauber, thank you for asking. I
    think that would probably be a question that the Chairman would
    also like to hear. And I know Dana Doran and myself have been
    working for 3 years, at least, with the EPA on the biofuels and
    the renewable fuel standard and feedstock eligibility.
        The EPA has misinterpreted the RFS. Their interpretation is
    contrary to all other public and private timber management
    organizations, and that is impeding the development of
    renewable fuels from forest-based feedstock. They need to
    accept those pathways that were talked about for feedstock to
    be eligible for RFS and RIN credits, and we have got hundreds
    of millions of dollars prepared to be invested in this new
    technology which, again, goes back to renewable fuels but
    forest-based.
        If we could overcome that, there would be a new plant built
    in Minnesota, your district. There would be a new plant built
    in Maine, and there is a plant being built right now in Oregon.
    It is a $330 million plant that would also benefit from the EPA
    acknowledging that their interpretation of eligible feedstock
    is incorrect.
        Mr. STAUBER. Well, thank you. In light of my short amount
    of time, I do know that Chair Golden and Ranking Member
    Hagedorn and I, we have all discussed that, and it is a
    priority, I know, for the Chair and Ranking Member, and I stand
    with them in helping with the solution.
        Scott Dane, thanks for your expert testimony. On behalf of
    all Minnesotans, and in particular northern Minnesota, thanks
    for your prior work with the ACLT. Tremendous. And your
    knowledge is really appreciated on this Committee. Thank you
    very much.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thanks for highlighting that. That was a
    really important exchange right there.
        I am going to move into a second round.
        I am going to start with Professor Daigneault. There has
    been some talk and focus on carbon markets as a way for small
    family forest owners to generate additional income out of their
    land. Do you believe that this is currently viable for small
    family forest owners? Do these carbon markets help to support
    forest ecosystems? Can they be a part of advancing climate
    mitigation solutions, but just as importantly, will they help
    or hurt forest products economies? And is the answer dependent
    on how the policy is structured or not?
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Right. Thank you, Representative Golden.
    Lots there to unpack.
        Thinking of just markets at large, right, carbon markets,
    they are part of the solution, but it might not be part of the
    solution for everybody. It does--it will provide sort of a
    diversified income stream to ideally promote more forest
    management, but the policies themselves has to be structured in
    a way that does that.
        A lot of sort of existing carbon markets that focus on
    forest carbon tend to penalize those who are understocked but
    have the potential to grow and basically reward a lot of those
    that are overstocked in the sense that they have a lot of
    carbon on the ground compared to maybe the average forest.
        The other thing that it does is it tends to--it is getting
    involved, particularly in carbon markets, is very time
    consuming, resource intensive, requires third-party audits and
    things like that that can make it really cost prohibitive for
    particularly the sort of small and family forest landowners.
    There are some organizations, like American Forest Foundation
    and Nature Conservancy, are working to develop programs that
    specifically target those that own, you know, less than a
    thousand acres, but they are still pretty nascent from that
    perspective.
        So, again, I think there are opportunities there, but I
    don't think it is the full solution. I think just, you know,
    saying that if we create a bunch of carbon markets and create
    some ways that people can buy, sell, and trade offsets are
    going to necessarily open up, you know, the forest to all
    these--to all this sort of management innovation, I think it is
    part of the solution. But I still think there are other aspects
    that we need to take in account, particularly that--you know,
    the duration that people have to enter into these markets, the
    sort of complexity of how some of these things work can make it
    more prohibitive than maybe, you know, what someone like myself
    teaches in theory in an economics course.
        Chairman GOLDEN. An excellent point. I appreciate that. And
    I know someone sitting next to me said we could have a whole
    hearing about that subject.
        But I wanted to ask, then, from the perspective of going
    from the classroom to on the street, Dana, maybe you could talk
    a little. I mean, I have seen that some of these programs are
    structured in ways that would probably be of concern to loggers
    and the Forest Products Council, but is there also, you know,
    something good here potentially if it means that more people
    are going to engage in forest growth? And does it give
    landowners another tool in the toolbox? What is your feedback
    on this?
        Mr. DORAN. You know, thanks for the question, Jared. And I
    have got a picture behind me of you operating a stroke
    delimber, by the way, and that is you also on the skidder. So I
    just wanted to make sure folks knew that was there and you
    actually did it.
        In terms of carbon markets, you know, I think carbon
    markets scare loggers quite a bit, because, you know, carbon
    markets generally are a reduction of the annual timber harvest
    or the annual cut, but we feel like it can be structured in a
    way that we make sure that we actually weed the forest, remove
    the low-value wood, and we can still conduct the same type of
    forest management without an impact to the contractor. But that
    is something that has to be mandated up front, and it really
    truly is a partnership between the landowner and the carbon
    market and even the logging contractor.
        As I mentioned in my testimony, you know, we created a
    third-party certification program for logging contractors 20
    years ago called the Master Logger Program. And the Master
    Logger Program is a third-party audit of the harvest. Professor
    Daigneault mentioned, the cost to the landowner, but there has
    to be a third-party audit to provide assurances and
    verification of the work one on the ground. I think, you know,
    we provide a pathway to try to mitigate that cost. And also, so
    you achieve the landowner point of view, you achieve the market
    capability, keep their land forested, because they are
    receiving a revenue forecast, and keep the contractor as part
    of that with the work that they are doing on the ground.
        So I think there is a path forward, but you have got to
    make sure that you have markets for low-value wood, whether
    that is biomass, or it is finding other markets for low-value
    wood. And then the contractors are part of that. And if we can
    develop a system like that that increases forest management,
    produces higher level products, greater markets, I think
    everybody shares in the prosperity. But that--that is a big nut
    that we have to crack.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you both.
        Do you have any follow-up questions?
        Mr. HAGEDORN. I will just ask one, if that is okay.
        So, Mr. Doran and Mr. Dane, I will kind of throw this out
    at you. Just so people understand a little bit better, I mean,
    we all experience one way or another these incredible increases
    in lumber costs. I mean, people had their houses go up $40,000
    to build, and people put off projects and everything else. But
    you say your industry doesn't really benefit from that.
        Can you explain to folks how it works and why that didn't
    trickle down to you?
        And I am just kind of curious. I mean, again, the farming
    and ag-based folks that I work with have to deal with meat
    packers, for instance, the livestock people. And they sometimes
    think that the meat packers are making a lot of money at the
    grocery stores and everything else selling their meat, but the
    farmer--it doesn't always get to the actual livestock farmer.
    Maybe that is similar here. So I would be interested in your
    response.
        Mr. DANE. Mr. Hagedorn, real quick. In my opinion, it was,
    for lack of a better word, gouging that was occurring within
    the markets because of demand. At the same time, there is an
    increase in forested land because the CRP maturing and that
    type of thing, so the supply was abundant. There was an
    increase in logging capacity with mills shutting down and
    stuff, so that infrastructure was also abundant. So the mills
    could afford to dictate, again, the price.
        I talked to a logger in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the other
    day, and he said that the mill told him, we are not cutting
    your price; we are just paying you less. So it is a mill-
    controlled market right there, and that is one of the reasons
    that the trickle down has not occurred.
        But I think my counterpart, Mr. Doran, would also have good
    information to share.
        Mr. DORAN. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Hagedorn. I appreciate the
    question, and Scott is spot on. You know, it is interesting, in
    the spring of this year, so let's say January to April, there
    were tremendous amount of reports nationally, the Wall Street
    Journal and New York Times, on the cost of lumber and kind of
    the breakdown of who was making the money. And I will tell you,
    the logging contractors, and the landowners for that matter,
    were not seeing any of the benefits. You know, we would
    communicate obviously with our Membership, but we are also
    talking to the landowner community, and there were a lot of
    folks who would talk to a logging contractor and say, oh, you
    must be getting rich right now; you have got to be able to pass
    that along. And they are just honestly saying, no, we are not,
    we are not getting any of this, and neither are you, and that
    was the bottom line.
        And it is interesting, we issued an opinion piece in one of
    our statewide newspapers back in April of this year, basically
    calling into question what was happening both here in the state
    but also nationally as to where the money was going. And, you
    know, I am not going to point the finger at one piece of this.
    There are a lot of players that are involved, you know, from
    the mills to the retailers to the wood brokers in between. I
    will tell you, there are also large cooperatives who buy
    materials on behalf of retailers. They are all involved.
        And so anywhere from retail to manufacturers, that is where
    the money was, and it wasn't just one piece of that that was
    making the money. But I will tell you, none of it was trickling
    down.
        But after we issued that opinion piece, we saw an increase
    in pricing that was paid to the contractors and to the
    landowners. So it is funny what happens sometimes when you get
    punched in the eye. There is a noticeable change that took
    place. Obviously, this summer, the commodity markets have
    changed. Lumber prices have come down in many respects. There
    has been, you know, a change in pricing. But a lot of the
    public attention has, I think, influenced where money has
    trickled and what has happened to overall pricing.
        But Mr. Dane is absolutely correct. There was gouging at a
    high level between those areas that I identified for you.
        Mr. HAGEDORN. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. It just seems
    like you are in a little bit of a precarious spot. You can't
    control your destiny in many ways. But the one thing that can
    always help you is to make sure that we have downward pressure
    on cost of production, to make sure that you can meet your
    bottom line, that whether--whatever money you are going to get
    from the mills, you can try to keep the cost of production low.
        And I will just come back to it. It is these big things
    that sometimes government can really screw up and hurt you on--
    taxes, regulations, energy, trade, and equipment, in this case,
    with the way the EPA jacked up the prices and made the
    equipment less reliable. In all those instances, government has
    an opportunity to improve your bottom line or government has an
    opportunity to move you towards being out of business. And I
    want you to know, I am on the side of trying to help you build
    your bottom line, so we are going to stand for those policies.
    Thanks for your testimony.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Speaking of regulations, I think Mr.
    Stauber has a question.
        Mr. STAUBER. Thank you, Chair Golden.
        I just have one additional question for Mr. Dane. You know,
    there is a lot of talk about adding endangered species to the
    list of endangered wildlife, et cetera. What does that do? You
    know, how does that affect your industry?
        I know in Congressman Golden's area, you know, the lobsters
    are having--they are having major issues, and I know in some
    parts of even Minnesota. What does that--what is the economic
    impact even prior to something being listed? What is the
    economic impact, and how does your industry look at that?
        Mr. DANE. Congressman Stauber, thank you very much. It is
    ironic that we think about this issue from a Minnesota
    perspective, and it is just one more tool that is going to be
    part of the arsenal to allow those who want to litigate forest
    management to death to utilize. And here is an example of it.
        The Canadian lynx is--kind of goes back and forth. Is it
    going to be in danger, is it not going to be endangered or
    threatened or whatever else it is. So they track Canadian lynx.
    First of all, that is just in Canada. They are not coming to
    Minnesota to mess up our timberlands. No, just kidding there.
    But they tracked them. And you know what they found out? The
    Canadian lynx traveled on logging roads. They are not stupid.
    You know, they are not going to go through the brush and
    everything else. They are going to travel on logging roads.
        So logging roads are not counterproductive to the Canadian
    lynx habitat at all. But, again, once you get something on that
    list, you can use it as a tool to interfere with forest
    management.
        Mr. STAUBER. Yeah. That is what we have heard, I have heard
    back home as well. And I think it is nationwide. And I think we
    have to really take a healthy look at that and what we need to
    do to really, I guess, stop the weaponization of the courts and
    allow your industry to do what you do well: manage forests,
    bring great jobs. You know as well as I do, in Minnesota, it is
    like a $10 billion industry statewide. It is huge. And so we
    stand ready to help, as Congressman Hagedorn stated, not only
    in Minnesota and Maine but across this great nation.
        So, with that, I will yield back, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. Good question. The lobster
    industry has taken a big hit, and weaponization of the courts
    is, I think, the perfect way to put it. That is a whole other
    topic right there but one we are in the thick of in Maine.
        I wanted to ask Mr. Thibodeau. I am sure you are aware that
    there is a perception out there that burning wood for energy
    isn't the best use of forests and trees, particularly when it
    comes to carbon sequestration and climate solutions. I wanted
    to give you the opportunity to talk about how ReEnergy uses
    fuel and where it comes from and how using that wood for energy
    generation helps ensure the continued health of forest land.
        Mr. THIBODEAU. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Golden. Yeah,
    forest and mill residue that we use for generating renewable
    electricity at our facilities come from logging operations in
    mills near our power plants. The vast majority of that comes
    from within about a 75-mile radius.
        When forests and land are maintained and harvested in a
    sustainable way, the forest continues to grow, and it grows
    healthier. It continues to consume atmospheric carbons. So wood
    markets and wood utilization are essential to forest
    maintenance. Without an outlet for owners to sell their
    harvested wood, the owners are more likely to sell their land
    for other uses.
        If you think of the biomass energy industry as taking the
    leftovers or the mill residues from forest operations, the low-
    value, low-grade products are critical, as many of our other
    witnesses have testified today, to promoting forest health. For
    example, creation of jobs from biomass industry as well as the
    economic output of our facilities. We recently had an economist
    study our two facilities in Maine, and they supported more than
    360 jobs and had an economic output of $95 million per year, on
    an annual basis. The Stratton facility alone, where I am
    located, purchased fuel from more than 58 Maine-based logging
    and trucking companies and more than 19 different mills in the
    State of Maine. So that is supporting that low-value market.
        So there is a perception out there that burning wood is not
    the best use of forests and trees, and I would agree with that.
    When you think about the higher value markets for lumber mills,
    furniture makers, paper, I would agree with that. However, you
    have to make sure there is a clear line there that we are not
    cutting down forests to make power. We are taking the
    leftovers, the residuals that are left behind and from mill
    residues. In order to make a 2 by 4, you have to debark that
    tree. That bark will come to a biomass energy facility such as
    ours for power production.
        Again, stressing baseload renewable power, biomass is one
    of the only, along with geothermal, that is considered baseload
    renewable power, which means, you know, we are producing power
    24/7, no matter how hot or cold it is, if it rains, if it is
    windy or not, or if the sun is shining.
        So thank you, Chairman Golden. Hopefully, that answered
    your question.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Yeah, of course. I am assuming, by the
    way, you don't have to go too far into it if you agree, that
    you are in agreement with Mr. Dane about the importance of the
    RFS for biomass.
        Mr. THIBODEAU. Yeah, absolutely. I would echo Mr. Dane's
    sentiments exactly. The RFS is something that we have been
    working with very closely through the Biomass Power Association
    and trying to activate those biomass pathways, kind of how I
    had mentioned in my testimony. It is really critical from a
    federal policy issue for the biomass industry and to address
    the interpretation of the term ``biomass'' as well.
        You know, infrastructure that supports, you know, such
    things as use of electric vehicles is very important to climate
    change. And in terms of development and continued operation of
    renewable energy projects such as ours, that renewable fuel
    standard is really critical. It will strengthen our potential
    role in the renewable fuel standard. So we hope and expect the
    biomass electricity pathway will become operational.
        Chairman GOLDEN. I know in Maine, we are really looking at
    policies that could turn our State into a bit of an energy
    island where we really can be producing, you know, and self-
    sufficient on our own energy production, and biomass is
    certainly a part of that. And we see it also helping small-
    scale manufacturers when they are able to, you know, generate
    onsite, which has occurred in a few places, but there are some
    tweaks that need to be made, I think, to increase that. Dana
    and I always agree: We shouldn't build a public school in Maine
    that doesn't have also some kind of biomass boiler or something
    built into it. It is public expenditures. But all of that
    depends also upon the future of having this forest resource and
    making sure that it stays healthy.
        So I guess my question is just to the professor. What types
    of policies are you looking at, either private or public,
    looking into the future to make sure that we have a healthy
    forest? I mean, do you think we are going to need to introduce
    new forest species or is it sustainable the way it is? I mean,
    what is your recommendation for the forest products industry in
    Maine?
        Mr. DAIGNEAULT. Yeah. So great question, Congressman. So
    one thing to think about is that I think we have to acknowledge
    that climate change is inevitable, right. We are already
    experiencing that, as Mr. Doran said, you know, how we have to
    harvest and what species we are seeing. It is changing, right.
    And so we have to do more to basically get that information out
    and help those on the ground who are managing, logging, et
    cetera, handle that and adapt accordingly.
        In addition, you know, with that, we do need to acknowledge
    that some species are going to grow faster than others, but at
    the same time, you know, those aren't necessarily basically the
    most desired species, per se. Coupled with that, you know, as
    we noted, we talked a little bit about carbon markets, but I
    think, again, we need to come up with ways to basically get
    people in the woods and managing from a whole suite of
    different opportunities. So that is more incentives to do
    management, more--you know, more through the USDA's NRCS and
    other things that at least are facilitating more management,
    more removal.
        That goes--couples with what Mr. Thibodeau was saying where
    we do need to basically have sort of robust markets for
    biomass, which is going to help basically get some of that
    lower grade wood out there, which is then going to increase and
    enhance the resiliency and health of our forests of what
    remains.
        In addition, I have noted that, you know, what everyone has
    talked about today is that we need to continue to find ways
    that make it, again, profitable to want to do things in the
    woods, right, and actively manage. And so I have noted at least
    that some of the sort of federal tax incentives that have been
    out there, at one point a couple years ago, they were
    considering dropping them. I think keeping those were a huge
    boost or a very important aspect for, not just the sort of
    logging and forestry community, but for climate change at
    large.
        And, lastly, I think we just--we also need to acknowledge
    that the economy is changing, people's needs are changing, and
    their uses of wood products are changing. So by continuing to
    explore other ways that we can use wood as substitutes for
    fossil-based products, you know, things that, you know, are
    more durable and sort of meet the needs, you know, the
    consumption needs, that is going to help put more value on the
    forest and in the woods that we rely on, which is then going to
    help boost a lot of these communities that, you know, have a
    long heritage and history of relying on our forest resources,
    you know, to make those communities thrive.
        We need to continue to push in that way and probably
    acknowledge that maybe, you know, pulp and paper is not going
    to be the solution for the next hundred years, but we still
    have an abundant wood basket that can provide a lot of
    resources that we can take advantage of.
        Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
        I think that is as good a place as any to wrap things up
    right there.
        I want to thank all the witnesses on the panel for joining
    us today, and I want to thank all my colleagues for joining us
    and for their good questions.
        From the testimony and the exchange sought here, I think it
    is clear the great benefits of the forest products industry and
    sustainable forestry can have for the country. And we all have
    a role to play in contributing to a healthy forest, to
    mitigating climate change, and to taking care of our local
    economies, making sure they can be successful. So I believe it
    is our responsibility to support industries like those that we
    have in our forested States and communities.
        Protecting our environment doesn't have to be bad for
    business, and I think our witnesses proved today that that is
    certainly not the case in places like Maine and Minnesota and a
    lot of others. I know down south as well. Sustainable forestry
    provides positive economic and social outcomes and meets the
    needs of the present and we hope future generations as well.
        So I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance
    policies to keep our forests healthy and continue to help small
    business owners and the forest products industry.
        So I would ask unanimous consent that Members have 5
    legislative days to submit statements and supporting materials
    for the record.
        Without objection, so ordered.
        And if there is no further business before the Committee,
    we are adjourned. Thank you all very much.
        [Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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