The cost of fuel removal needed in the western United States exceeds available federal funding; therefore, meeting fuel treatment goals may require engaging the private sector to market treatment biomass. To assess the economics of fuel treatments in the western United States, we develop a spatially explicit model of the revenues and costs of fuel removal in Idaho and Montana. We find that fuel treatment sales would not be economically feasible across most of the study region unless prices of small-diameter material were to rise significantly. However, the area of feasible treatments could be dramatically expanded under current market conditions by bundling treatments with sawtimber harvest or subsidizing fuel treatment sales, perhaps through the allowance for negatively priced sales. In many places, required subsidies would be much lower than the cost of noncommercial alternative fuel treatments, indicating their potential to extend the impact of appropriated funding.

中文翻译：

---

提高燃料处理的经济可行性：美国联邦土地的市场和政策路径


美国西部所需的燃料清除成本超过了可用的联邦资金;因此，实现燃料处理目标可能需要让私营部门参与处理生物质的市场。为了评估美国西部燃料处理的经济性，我们开发了一个空间明确的模型，用于分析爱达荷州和蒙大拿州的燃料去除收入和成本。我们发现，除非小直径材料的价格大幅上涨，否则在研究区域的大部分地区，燃料处理销售在经济上是不可行的。然而，在当前的市场条件下，通过将处理与锯材采伐捆绑在一起或补贴燃料处理销售，也许通过允许负价销售，可以大大扩大可行处理的范围。在许多地方，所需的补贴将远低于非商业替代燃料处理的成本，这表明它们有可能扩大拨款的影响。