Southern Hopes Riding on Georgia Bioenergy Plant

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Southern Hopes Riding on Georgia Bioenergy Plant

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Mark Hall has spent too many hours driving the ponderous I-65 route between his native Huntsville and Mobile not to appreciate what the construction of a bioenery processing plant in Georgia could mean for Alabama and the rest of the South.

Scarcely anyone completing the journey can help but notice that most of Alabama sits under a lush, verdant blanket of forestland.

And that is precisely why Hall, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System renewable energy specialist, and countless other alternative energy experts have pinned their hopes on the Soperton, Ga., plant. The construction of this plant could change the face of energy production in the United States — as far as Hall is concerned, for the better.

Its success also could send ripples through the Southern economy — positive ripples in this case by creating an almost insatiable demand for a product Alabama and the rest of the region have in almost stupefying abundance — trees.

The Soperton facility, which will convert lumber and agricultural byproducts into ethanol, likely will provide an important measure of just how readily these types of 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. energy sector, will supply only about 10 to 11 percent of the nation’s energy needs — one of the main reasons why scientists have been experimenting for years with what are potentially far more lucrative sources of ethanol production: cellulosic sources such as switchgrass, forestland byproducts and agricultural waste.

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.

Other entrepreneurs are experimenting with enzymatic processes that break down the cellulose so that it then can be converted into fuel.

But like it or not — and most alternative energy experts don’t — economics remains the biggest stumbling block.

Granted, government incentives and concerns about the limitations of corn-based ethanol have sparked a massive investment in the development of cellulosic sources. But if the basic principles of economics hold true in this case, cellulosic ethanol won’t take hold unless it proves cost-effective. And, theoretically, at least, it will never become cost-effective if 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, just like oil, is a fossil fuel— 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.

Source: Hopes Riding on Georgia Bioenergy Plant, ACES Extension Daily.