Wildfire Money
Following the money in wildfire.
Saturday, July 25, 2026 · Where money enters, moves through, and leaves the wildfire economy
The Lead
The West's biggest utility put a fresh price on wildfire Thursday. PG&E beat on Q2, with non-GAAP core EPS of $0.40 against a $0.36 consensus, $5.9B in operating revenue, and full-year guide reaffirmed at $1.64–$1.66. But the wildfire lines are the ones vendors read: a $126M Wildfire Fund expense for the quarter (up from $109M a year ago), 37 miles undergrounded against a 1,900-mile target by end-2027, and grid monitoring the company credits with avoiding 28 ignitions and $11.2M in costs. Shares still slid ~3.1% to $17.54. The whole thing rides a $73B capital plan through 2030.
The money kept moving on other fronts, too: Bridger Aerospace put two of its Super Scoopers into first-ever European revenue service, chasing a two-hemisphere season; the National Forest Foundation opened a slate of fuels-work RFPs outside the federal grant calendar; and the most urgent clock on the board, CAL FIRE's $15.9M Sierra resilience grant, closes Monday. The recurring giants held steady rather than moved: Edison's Eaton tab sat unchanged at $750M offered / $314M paid since Monday, and the FAIR Plan's ~$700B exposure is the backdrop, not the news. Follow the money.
Money with a clock on it. Closest close date first.
MON JULY 27: CAL FIRE 2026 Wildfire & Forest Resilience Directed Grant, $15.9M pool. Closes 5 PM PT Monday. Eligible: 501(c)(3) nonprofits, public agencies, tribal governments with projects in the 24-county Sierra-Cascade region; ≥40% of benefit must reach disadvantaged communities. The most imminent large pot in the West. CA Grants Portal
JULY 31: National Forest Foundation fuels-work RFPs. Two restoration RFPs close: Feather River hand-thinning/hazard-tree work on the Plumas NF (CA) and Pauline Canyon oak/juniper thinning up to 719 acres on the Coronado NF (AZ). Project-priced, contractor-eligible. nationalforests.org
AUG 3 (OPENS) → OCT 8 (CLOSES): Colorado FRWRM Grant, ~$7.04M. Up to $2M carved out for capacity-building, no per-award cap. Eligible: community groups/HOAs, local governments, fire districts, utilities, water providers, nonprofits; 1:1 match (25% in lower-resource areas). Best lead-time item on the board. csfs.colostate.edu
AUG 14: NFF Tecuya Ridge Shaded Fuel Break. ~1,620 acres of fuel reduction/green-tree thinning on the Los Padres NF (CA). Contractor RFP. nationalforests.org
AUG 24: NFF Stringtown Connell Gulch Phase 2. 1,738 acres of mastication/hand thinning on the Prescott NF (AZ). Contractor RFP. nationalforests.org
OPEN NOW: CAL FIRE Tribal Wildfire Resilience Grants (Prop 4), $10M pool, $250K–$3M per award. Concept proposals are being accepted now, with awards announced Spring 2027. Eligible: federally recognized and state-consultation-list tribes, tribally-led 501(c)(3)s, projects on CA ancestral homelands. grants.ca.gov
ROLLING THROUGH DEC 31: WA DNR Wildfire Resilience & Forest Health cost-share. Reimbursement-based, non-federal WA forest landowners under 5,000 forested acres. dnr.wa.gov
WATCH: USFS Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) Round 4. Expected Fall 2026; no federal NOFO posted yet. Historically ~$200M/round, up to $250K planning / $10M project per award. The biggest imminent federal story for WUI communities, tribes, and nonprofits. fs.usda.gov
July 23, 2026. The quarterly wildfire-fund line rose to $126M from $109M a year earlier ($228M year-to-date); undergrounding crept 37 miles closer to the 1,900-mile 2027 target, plus 100 miles of hardened poles, inside a $73B capital plan through 2030. Every mile of covered conductor and undergrounding is a line item someone bids on. The biggest sustained VM/hardening buyer in the country just told you it's still spending.
July 23, 2026. Bridger (NASDAQ: BAER) put its two newest CL-215T scoopers into its first revenue-generating European operations, in Portugal under contract through mid-October; lease value undisclosed. Aerial-firefighting assets now chase a two-hemisphere season. Off-season European revenue is a brand-new line for a US tanker operator, and fleet utilization is the whole game.
July 20, 2026. The report tallies California's wildfire fund at $21B (2018–2025) plus an $18B continuation account added Sept 2025, cites ~$16.5B in 2018 Camp Fire losses, and flags an April 2026 Oregon reversal of a ~$1B PacifiCorp verdict as proof of litigation unpredictability. Where liability law is murky, utility cost-of-capital rises, and that flows straight into the rate base contractors and insurers get paid out of.
Decision due Aug 13, 2026. The Commission delayed a call on excluding ~$2.6B of PG&E wildfire liabilities and state borrowing from its capital-structure math; in the same meeting it approved $54.4M of SoCalGas storage-integrity recovery and a $198.8M Northern San Joaquin transmission project. Capital-structure rulings set how much a utility can borrow and earn on, the ceiling on every hardening dollar downstream. Mark Aug 13.
Launched April 17, 2026; live. Funded by the voter-approved Climate Tax through 2040; the prior cycle pushed $400K+ across 262 applications. Every municipal rebate line is a demand pool for defensible-space crews, arborists, and home-hardening installers. This is a customer, budgeted.
Closes July 31 / Aug 14 / Aug 24. Four project-priced restoration RFPs across the Plumas, Coronado, Los Padres, and Prescott forests, totaling several thousand acres of thinning, mastication, and hazard-tree work. Foundation-routed forest money moves outside the federal grant calendar. If you run crews, this is contract volume the Grants.gov crowd never sees.
July 2, 2026. The EPA Safer Choice-recognized fire-inhibitor maker added partners across CA, CO, FL, MT, WA, and Alberta, targeting the top-10 high-risk markets and a doubling again by year-end; no dollar figures disclosed. Channel-building in home-applied fire inhibitor is an early read on where consumer and HOA retardant dollars go next.
June–July 2026. FEMA's AFG ($291.6M), SAFER ($324M), and FP&S ($32.4M) all closed June 22; BRIC ($1B) closed July 23 after a court-ordered revival; Pre-Disaster Mitigation ($189.7M) closed July 22; CAL FIRE's $70M Wildfire Prevention Grants closed July 8 (its "$70M available" banner is stale, so ignore it). If you missed these, the federal cupboard is bare. Plan cash flow around the state and foundation money above for the rest of 2026.
$126 million
PG&E's Wildfire Fund expense for Q2 2026 alone: up from $109M a year earlier, $228M year-to-date, and a recurring line every quarter before a dollar of hardening capex is counted. StockTitan, July 23, 2026
Checks written. FEMA's $15.4M Pre-Disaster Mitigation round for California (closed July 22) carried ~$3.9M of wildfire-specific work: Chino Hills fire-risk reduction ($1.6M), Irvine wildfire prevention ($1.1M), Chula Vista hazardous fuels reduction ($837K). The University of Nevada, Reno banked a $3.55M DOI grant for six years of Sierra-front fuels reduction. And SCE's Eaton relief tab held at $314M+ paid / $750M+ offered, unchanged since Monday but still the largest committed rebuild-and-claims pipeline in the state.
Awardee lists to chase. Those three FEMA-funded California cities will be scoping fuels and home-hardening subcontracts. NFF's Feather River, Tecuya Ridge, Stringtown, and Pauline Canyon projects each need thinning, mastication, and hazard-tree crews. CAL FIRE's $70M Prop 4 Wildfire Prevention award list (window closed July 8) is imminent and names your subcontracting targets. On the calendar: Edison (EIX) and Xcel (XEL) report Q2 on July 30, with the Eaton Fire and the $640M Marshall Fire settlement the swing factors.
The wildfire economy's wanted ads.
Hiring signal: the people who approve wildfire spending are staffing up to oversee it. California's PUC has been posting Public Utilities Regulatory Analyst roles centered on wildfire-mitigation cost (the analysts who decide whether utility hardening dollars are "just and reasonable"), while CAL FIRE forestry and prevention roles and fire-tech engineering openings run hot across the major job boards. When the regulators are hiring for the beat, the budget behind it isn't going anywhere.
Hiring in the wildfire economy? Post a listing (free during launch) and email jake@wildfiremoney.com.