Hopes Riding on Georgia Bioenergy Plant

The construction of a cutting-edge bioenergy processing plant in the dense pine forests of Georgia could change the face of energy production in the United States.

Bioenergy experts are counting on it, including the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Mark Hall.

Hall, an Extension renewable energy specialist, has spent too many hours driving the I-65 stretch between his native Huntsville and Mobile, viewing the lush green forestland from one end of the state to the other, not to appreciate what this plant could mean for the region’s — and his own state’s —economy.

That’s precisely why he and other renewable energy experts, especially in the South, are rooting so loudly and passionately for the success of the Soperton, Ga., plant. Its success could send ripples through the Southern economy — positive ripples, in this case, by creating red-hot demand for a product Alabama and the rest of the region enjoy in almost stupefying abundance — trees.

The facility will convert lumber and other agricultural byproducts, into ethanol. Indeed, experts say the Soperton plant likely will provide an important measure of just how readily these products can be used to power America’s turn away from fossil fuels.

Energy pundits have projected that corn-based ethanol, currently the bedrock of the U.S. ethanol sector, will supply only about 10 to 11 percent of the nation’s energy needs.

That is why so many hopes, particularly Southern hopes, are pinned on the Soperton plant. Aside from generating a huge demand for Southern-grown products, it and similar plants have the potential of moving the nation farther down the road toward energy efficiency.

Science already has gone a long way toward perfecting the conversion of biomass into ethanol. One especially promising method involves a thermochemical approach whereby biomass is gasified and then converted into synthetic fuel — the method that will be used at the Soperton plant.

But like it or not — and most alternative energy experts don’t — economics remains the biggest stumbling block. Renewable energy won’t take hold unless it proves cost-effective. And, theoretically, at least, it won’t be cost-effective so long as it can’t compete with coal, which, compared with forestry and other biomass-derived ethanol products, remains “dirt cheap.”

“It still costs less to extract and transport coal than it does to process wood and other agricultural byproducts into renewable fuels,” says Dr. Paul Mask, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s assistant director for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources.

“Given that fact, it’s just extremely hard for any renewable source to compete with coal.”

Still, the fact remains that coal is a fossil fuel, just like oil — a fact also conspicuously noted in the Kyoto Treaty — and for that reason alone, many people are determined to make renewable fuels work, despite the higher costs.

In fact, as Mask stresses, a simpler source of forestry-derived bioenergy — wood pellets manufactured largely from Southern wood products — already is enjoying a modest boom in Europe, where policymakers and consumers alike are less inclined to wait for more cost-effective sources of renewable fuels.

And plants already are under construction in Georgia and Alabama to supply the growing demand for these pellets.

Mask says global warming and related environmental concerns may prove to be as big a driving factor behind the success of biomass-derived fuels as the quest for U.S. energy efficiency.

Whatever this driving factor turns out to be, the Southern forestry and farming sectors could benefit enormously.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at August 14, 2007 04:48 PM