Posted on 02/08/2011 1:34:01 AM PST by lbryce
To turn wood chips into ethanol fuel, George W. Bush's Department of Energy in February 2007 announced a $76 million grant to Range Fuels for a cutting-edge refinery. A few months later, the refinery opened in the piney woods of Treutlen County, Ga., as the taxpayers of Georgia piled on another $6 million. In 2008, the ethanol plant was the first beneficiary of the Biorefinery Assistance Program, pocketing a loan for $80 million guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers.
Last month, the refinery closed down, having failed to squeeze even a drop of ethanol out of its pine chips.
The Soperton, Ga., ethanol plant is another blemish on ethanol's already tarnished image, but more broadly, it is cautionary tale about the elusive nature of "green jobs" and the folly of the government's efforts at "investing" -- as President Obama puts it -- in new technologies.
Late in the Bush administration, corn-based ethanol started to get a bad rap. Corn for ethanol was crowding out other crops, and food prices were soaring. Mexicans rioted as tortilla prices spiked. So Bush started talking up "advanced biofuels" including "cellulosic ethanol": roughly, ethanol distilled from plants that were not also food products. Bush mentioned wood chips and switchgrass in two consecutive State of the Union addresses
Georgia politicians saw an opportunity here. "The Saudi Arabia of Pine Trees" became an unofficial state motto among Peach State politicians, and Gov. Sonny Perdue declared, "I'm confident the bioenergy industry and sector is going to be a cornerstone of the new Georgia."
Amid all this hopeful talk by politicians, there were naysayers among the scientists. One Nobel Prize-winning physicist talked to the New York Times about these startups trying to turn logging waste into fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
A South Georgia plant that turns wood waste into fuel
Waste wood is already fuel. Why convert it to anything?
You can get energy out of wood. Just burn it to heat the water to run the generators.
$76 Million. Wasted.
http://www.lcra.org/newsstory/2009/crezorder.html
In 4 years there will be many more miles of transmission - one problem is folks don't want the line in their back yards. For example, Denton county residents are fighting and thus have delayed some of these lines.
Good post...thanks for the concise summary.
Sad thing is I know of a lumbermill in east Texas that does that already. It has been running since the mid 90’s. The guy has a small 3 megawatt generator boiler setup that is fueled primarily by wood waste. Thye also sell the wood ash for use in other processes.
Dude, if you gave me 500 Billion dollars, I could build, market, and distribute absolutely anything that you would like. :-)
the Synfuels Corporation of the 70’s....history just keeps repeating itself and yet people don’t learn
First check would be that salary, and the second would be that bonus, you have worked so long and hard for, making nothing. LOL, but of course the third check would be that million dollar plus retirement nest egg. My former defeated congressman got a several million dollar earmark for a guy where I live to build and start a free sea food distribution. The bank foreclosed on the new building about four years ago, it is still empty, don’t know where the guy and his nest egg went to.
That’s because it’s the fault of capitalists. ;’)
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