Pine trees may be future for Georgia

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With motorists wincing at the gas researchers and entrepreneurs are rushing to perfect and scalee up technology needed to build biorefineries to help provide gas suchas ethanol. They are looking to producw 500 million gallons ofbiofuels — 100 milliojn in biodiesel and 400 million in ethano — by 2012. A crucial part of meeting thosew aggressive projections lieswith Georgia’s 24 millionh acres of lush commercial forests, whichy include the most privately owned forest acreage of any Biofuel plants can harness the raw materials from these trees, or to produce cellulosic ethanol.
“We grow pine trees like Iowa growas corn,” said Jill Stuckey, director of the Energy Innovatiom Center, an arm of the . The statd is seeing a surge in the development and production ofbiofuels — helpesd in part by federal state efforts and a host of companiesw working on energy-related projects. The race to commercially producercellulosic ethanol, a biofuel produces from wood, grasses or the non-edible partx of plants, is playing out in the labs of and in Treutlenn County.
Last month, demonstrated pre-pilot planf equipment at Georgia Tech to show its biochemicalp efforts at producingcellulosic ethanol, a process that uses enzymess to break down pine “We are working on an overall process that reallyu hasn’t been done before,” said Roger Reisert, founder and CEO of Atlanta-based C2 Biofuels. “Whem crude oil was at $30 per barrel, it made no sensd at all. These days, there is a huge economid casefor it.” In Soperton, Colo.-based . broke grounde last November on a plant that usesa thermo-chemicaol process to produce ethanol the company says is cheaper than biochemical processes.
Both companies see the potentialin Georgia, whichj consumes 5 billion gallons of gasoline a Ethanol, a clean-burning, high-octane fuel produced from plant is used with gasoline to create a blend of 90 percen t gas and 10 percent ethanol, which in Georgiwa means a ready market of 500 million gallonsd of the biofuel. In Forbes Magazine ranked the Peach State as the thir d best state inthe U.S. for alternative energhy from biomass, just threew months after Gov. Sonny Perdue launched the EnergtyInnovation Center.
The effort, part of Perdue’s Centerx of Innovation program, aims to help develop a bioenergy industry that will producew 15 percent ofthe state’s transportation fuels by 2020 from locall y produced biofuels. “When crude oil hit about $60 or $70 per that’s when all of the energy, moneyy and research effort began to get investes in the most efficient conversion process for saidKen Stewart, Georgia’x commissioner.
The state already touts the Bioenergy Corridor, a collectio n of research centers, commercial forestry infrastructure and It includes initiatives at and Georgia as well as at least eightbiodiesell factories, a wood pellet factory and three ethanokl plants. “There are still scientific questions to be There are industry questions to be said JoyDoran Peterson, a microbiology professor at UGA. “Therse is a dance between yes, we are five yearzs out and companies that say we need to do itrighft now.
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