While a biofuel plant can crop up anywhere, what does it take for a community to attract the necessary investors?
Per officials, it takes that of which Southwest Georgia has in abundance: biomass.
“There are a lot of communities, especially rural communities, that are looking for industry, and the (businesses) I deal with are looking for rural settings where they are close to the biomass,” said Jill Stuckey, director of alternative fuels with the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority.
“We (Georgia) are second only to Oregon in the amount of forests,” she said. “In Oregon, much of it is national forest and it’s not accessible.
“So it’s great, from an economic development standpoint, to have Georgia’s biomass to use.”
The push for alternative fuels — and specifically, renewable fuels — is purely market-driven, said Ross Harding, vice president for business development at Savannah-based Herty Advanced Materials Development Center.
“Energy isn’t about social choices; it’s about economics,” he said recently while in Albany. “It is probably one of the largest big opportunities that any of us will see in the next 50 years. ... Places like Albany may be some of the best positioned in the world for what will happen in 20-30 years.”
For Harding, a renewable energy source is one that can replenish itself within an average human lifetime.
“I’ll tell you that coal and oil are renewable ... in 2 million years,” he said.
Southwest Georgia has been quick to take advantage of the biofuel boom, with plants under way in places including Camilla and Plains and a fuel company scoping out possibilities in Albany. Throughout the state, noted Stuckey, who said she gets 50 calls a day “from folks,” there are at least 10 small biofuel plants.
Though commodities prices are on the rise, corn-based ethanol remains the most popular biofuel, in part because its technology is the most advanced. Already, most gas contains up to 10 percent ethanol.
In Camilla, First United Ethanol LLC, better known as FUEL, has no plans to divert from its corn-based business plan.
“We are going to go with corn-based technology because it’s the only one that exists that is technologically feasible at this point,” said Alicia Shirah, director of communications at FUEL. “There are other technologies out there, but they are in their infancy.”
Stuckey concurred.
“The corn ethanol is a stepping stone. Probably 20 years from now, the factory in Camilla will be using a different feed stock than corn,” she said. “Right now, corn is what we know how to use.”
Shirah said that a 1-cent increase in the price of ethanol is $1 million to FUEL’s bottom line.
The groundbreaking for FUEL’s $170 million plant was held in early 2007. By October, Shirah expects the plant to be producing ethanol. About three weeks after it goes live, FUEL should reach its 100-million gallon capacity, she said.
Other places, however, are giving cellulosic a try.
In Treutlen County, about 100 miles west of Savannah, work began in early November on the nation’s first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant. Stuckey said the plant is the first in the world.
“They are going to be using our pine trees,” she said. “In Georgia, there are 24 million acres of trees. Twelve million are plantation trees, and we grow them as a crop, so they are renewable.”
Other folks, Stuckey said, “are interested in using sorghum as a feed stock in making ethanol” as well as peanut oil and soybean oil.
“You can make biodiesel out of that,” she said, “but it’s a hard market.”
In looking at a fuel source’s return on investment, so to speak, scientists at the University of Georgia are taking algae beyond the pond scum.
“UGA is doing a lot of work ... to come up with a fast-growing algae that we can harvest oil from to make biodiesel,” Stuckey said.
Stuckey explained that an acre of soybeans yields about 45 gallons of biodiesel.
“That’s not a lot, given that we use 2 billion gallons of diesel per year in Georgia,” said Stuckey, citing figures from the energy department.
Algae, she said, “yields 1,400-1,500 gallons (of biodiesel) per acre.”
There are a slew of alternative-fuel plants throughout the country, but the United States is just producing about 9 billion gallons of it annually, Harding said.
“Even with all this work, we’ll replace just 20 percent of our gas use,” he said.
At 20 percent, he said, “We’ll have more than enough trees” to do it through the pulp industry.
But, Harding asked, “How do you collect it effectively?”
Like so many other efforts, it’s about location.
“The largest (task) for a community is to get their local landowners organized and with information in their hands,” he said. “It’s all going to come back to trees.”
• DID YOU KNOW?
According to the International Energy Administration, “offsetting the biodiesel and ethanol added to the U.S. and European markets since 2005 would require around 1 million barrels a day of additional crude oil supplies to be processed.”
One million barrels a day at $138 per barrel (at close of trading Friday) equals $138 million a day. At 365 days, that $135 million becomes $50.4 trillion a year.