This issue brief examines the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from forest fuel treatments on federal land proposed in West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s draft Energy Infrastructure Act.

In 2020, 58,950 wildfires burned more than 10 million acres across the United States. Seventy percent of burned acreage was on US federal lands. Fuel treatments can reduce wildfire hazard potential and, if strategically located, lower burned area, fire intensity, loss of life, and damage to structures and other property. Fuel treatment may also reduce greenhouse gas emissions through declines in the extent and intensity of future wildfires which, in burning vegetative biomass, release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere.

In the short run, these treatments remove vegetation and therefore carbon from forests, with some of this carbon stored in forest products.  In the long run, carbon storage increases as it shifts to more fire-resistant trees. Reduction in high intensity fires will also reduce fire-induced changes in forest types, which can enhance long run storage of carbon in these forests.