Community Wood Facilities Assistance Act of 2025

This plan updates federal grants that help towns and businesses build and improve community wood facilities and forest product plants. It shifts the focus to using forest biomass and allows funds to cover processing, manufacturing, construction of new facilities, and retrofits—not just existing sawmills. It also raises the limit on thermal energy system size to 15 megawatts and changes the cost-share from 25% to 50%. Individual grants can go up to $5 million. Overall funding would be $50 million each year from 2026 through 2030. These changes aim to support more and larger projects that turn forest materials into useful products and heat.

Key points:

• What’s eligible expands to include construction, use, and retrofitting for forest products manufacturing that uses primarily forest biomass, including processing and manufacturing.
• Project size limit for thermal energy systems increases to 15 megawatts.
• The program changes a cost-share percentage from 25% to 50%.
• Maximum grant amount: up to $5,000,000 per project.
• Total funding: $50,000,000 each year for fiscal years 2026–2030.

Small summary table:

• Who is affected: Communities and companies planning or improving community wood facilities and forest products manufacturing.
• What changes: Broader eligible uses; bigger project size limit; cost-share updated to 50%; grants up to $5M.
• When: Funding authorized for fiscal years 2026–2030.