Authors: Egon Terplan and Karen Warner (BEAM Circular)
In response to the economic dislocation from COVID-19 and the subsequent federal investment in recovery, one California county – Stanislaus County – chose to make a major investment in growing the local bioeconomy as part of an economic mobility strategy. That seed investment resulted in the creation of a new bioeconomy sector intermediary and the expansion of the work to become a regionwide priority where the intermediary has been working with dozens of companies and researchers since 2023. That funding successfully leveraged four times additional public and private resources. Over several years, this sector intermediary tested new approaches and shifted strategies in response to changes in technology readiness and feedstock diversity. The findings from this experience shaped the strategy. And the lessons from this experience are broadly applicable to regions nationwide. This case study details the specific actions that took place in Stanislaus County and the broader North San Joaquin Valley region to grow a new bioeconomy cluster.
