Blue Forest Conservation, Carbon and Biomass Internship, Summer 2024
Every summer, The Bill Lane Center for the American West offers many opportunities for Stanford undergraduates (including graduating seniors and co-terms) to work with organizations throughout the West. Through these internships, students can explore careers in natural history, conservation, land use, museum curation, resource management, energy and more.
All internships are full-time for nine to ten weeks during the summer. They are fully funded by the Lane Center with stipends ranging from $7,500 to $10,000.
The Lane Center has placed hundreds of interns in positions across the West since 2005. It has developed strong relationships with host organizations and works hard to ensure interns have successful and enriching experiences.
For more information about the internship program, please visit the FAQs page, or email Education Manager Corinne Thomas.
Details about the summer 2023 cohort of student interns and their placements can be found here.
Student reflections about the internship experience can be found by visiting the Out West student blog and the Lane Center Instagram channel.
Stipend Information:
The Bill Lane Center will provide a base stipend of $7,500 with additional funding for student financial aid and location, if applicable, up to $10,000.
Description of the Organization:
Blue Forest Conservation is a conservation finance non-profit focused on forest restoration. We are harnessing financial innovation and building partnerships with investors, non-profits, private companies and the public sector to design sustainable solutions to systemic climate resilience challenges faced by vulnerable communities and ecosystems.
Its mission is to leverage innovative finance to support sustainable environmental solutions. Through its financial mechanism, the Forest Resilience Bond (FRB), it brings together multiple stakeholders that benefit from forest restoration projects to address the catastrophic wildfire situation. Through FRB public-private partnerships, those stakeholders (government agencies, utilities, private companies) share in the cost of reimbursing investors as the environmental, economic, and social benefits of project activities are realized.
Internship Overview:
Are you interested in working for a California non-profit at the intersection of sustainable finance and forest restoration? In this role you will have the opportunity to work across an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, financial gurus, and expert communicators to foster economic development in underserved rural communities while working to accomplish State of California climate initiatives and respond to the wildfire crisis.
This role will work primarily between our science and investment teams to explore
1) how sustainable use of low-value forest biomass can help to achieve the breadth of policy initiatives working towards carbon neutrality by 2045,
2) what barriers exist to using low-value forest biomass for carbon beneficial uses such as hydrogen or biochar, and
3) how an environmentally sound and socially just forest restoration industry could be achieved.
The first goal of this internship will be to work closely with the Blue Forest team to synthesize current policy initiatives working towards climate goals and how low-value forest biomass utilization can help to accomplish those goals. The intern would have the opportunity to work directly with our team as well as a wide range of partners from academia, governmental, non-profit, and industry to gain an in-depth understanding of how the State of California is currently working to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. Low-value forest biomass can help to accomplish carbon neutrality when used to generate carbon beneficial electricity, fuels, or other products, but we currently lack an efficient and cost effective way to access these resources.
The second goal of this project is to interview a range of stakeholders throughout the state who can illuminate the barriers to creating ecologically sound supply chains for low-value forest biomass. Blue Forest manages the California Wildfire Innovation Fund, which is a first-of-its-kind climate fund that seeks to generate competitive financial returns while reducing fire risk for communities and ecosystems by investing in the wood utilization and wildfire mitigation sectors. However, for the fund to be most effective, reliable and transparent supply chains for low-value woody biomass must be developed in ways that reinvigorate forest-based industries and underserved rural communities throughout the state.
The final goal of the internship will be to pull together the learnings from the project into a short publicly facing report outlining the current opportunities and barriers to develop socially and ecologically restorative supply chains for low-value forest biomass. The day-to-day work will involve coordinating and attending meetings with government partners and industry representatives, desktop research, scientific literature review, interview synthesis, and assisting in developing a report and communication materials about the project. This will be a remote internship with opportunities to go into the field at locations throughout the Sierra Nevada mountains to see forest management in action and potentially wood products facilities.
Internship Work Environment:
This is a primarily remote internship with occasional in person events and day-long trips to the Sierra Nevada or greater Sacrament/ Bay Area to visit project sites.
The intern must be located in the Bay Area/Sacramento region.
Transportation: It is not necessary for the intern to have a car; Blue Forest can arrange car pools for site visits.
Housing is not provided.
The intern will be mentored and supervised by the senior scientist for Natural Capital and will also work closely with other members of the science and investment teams.
Day-to-day work will begin with desktop research conducted alongside the science and investment teams and then will transition to scheduling and facilitating interviews with a range of partners.
The final stages of the internship will focus on research and interview synthesis as well as report writing.
The work is remote, but the supervisor and others will be available for daily check ins and support.
Blue Forest Conservation's location is Sacramento, California.
- Desktop research
- Coordinating meetings
- Conducting interviews
- Interview analysis
- Report writing
Bill Lane Center internships are part of Cardinal Quarter opportunities and students from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. The opportunities are full-time (35-40 hours a week) for 9-10 consecutive weeks during the summer.
Specific start and end dates can be coordinated directly with the supervisor.
All undergraduates of any year, including graduating seniors, are eligible. Graduating seniors are eligible only if they are graduating in spring quarter. Students who have already graduated, e.g., fall or winter quarter of this academic year are not eligible.
Coterms are eligible only if they hold undergraduate status.
For more application advice, please visit the BLC’s FAQs page.
Please note:
- Students are not permitted to engage in another full-time internship, job, or volunteer opportunity (whether funded by Stanford or otherwise) during this full-time, summer internship.
- Student athletes should confirm the impact of any awarded stipend on their athletic eligibility by contacting the Compliance Services Office prior to committing to an internship.
- New Stipend Policy per the U.S. Department of Education: A stipend is considered a resource and it may have an impact on a student’s financial aid. To comply with US Department of Education regulations, student payments, awards, prizes, and gifts that are made available to the student because they are a Stanford student, must be reported to the Financial Aid Office. The Financial Aid Office is responsible for the disbursement of stipend funds to undergraduates. For more information, please visit the Financial Aid Office's webpage about the student stipend policy.
Application Guidelines for this Internship:
Blue Forest Conservation has an interdisciplinary team and welcomes students with broad backgrounds. Potential majors of interest may include economics, earth systems, environmental systems engineering, science technology and society, communications, political science and public policy.
Required Skills:
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Positive attitude
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Effective communicator
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Strong organizational skills with exceptional attention to detail
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Excellent writer
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Ability to quickly research and synthesize government initiatives
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Knowledge of natural resource management (forestry a plus)
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Basic understanding of carbon accounting
Desired Skills:
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Knowledge of forestry
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Experience managing meetings
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Interview analysis
Selection of applicants:
Complete applications are screened and finalists are contacted for a first-round interview with staff from The Bill Lane Center for the American West.
The top candidates for the position are then forwarded to the organization for second-round interviews with their potential supervisor and other staff.
Host organizations will then notify the Lane Center of their preferred candidate and that applicant will receive an internship offer from the Bill Lane Center by email.
The applicant is expected to respond promptly (within 48 hours) via email to the offer or the offer will be rescinded.
Once an applicant accepts an offer, they are required to promptly notify all other Stanford and non-Stanford programs to which they have applied that they have accepted another offer and withdraw their candidacy from those other opportunities.