Biofuel push may take root in Ga.

[Georgia] Less than two weeks ago when President Bush told the country it needed to produce a whopping 35-billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2017, he may have had Georgia on his mind. Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue announced that a plant west of Savannah would soon begin turning pine bark and tree limbs into ethanol, a venture that could turn the state’s pine country into the biofuels Saudi Arabia of the South. “It’s going to change the geopolitical nature of the world when you can take a passive waste product like biomass from Georgia and turn it into an alternative fuel,” Perdue said. Range Fuels says it will be the first company in the United States to build a commercial-scale ethanol plant using cutting-edge cellulosic technology. Unlike more common corn-based ethanol refineries, the cellulosic process can turn almost any organic material – from tree bark to municipal solid waste – into fuel.
News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
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