Bioenergy plant coming to Georgia

By David Markiewicz and Dan Chapman

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Europe's growing need for cleaner-burning fuels has prompted a large German utility to open a bioenergy plant in Waycross.

More may be on the way.

RWE Innogy will spend $150 million on the 75-employee facility, which will make wood pellets from forest industry byproducts. About 750,000 tons of pellets will be produced a year at the southeast Georgia plant, which is expected to open in early 2011. They will be shipped to the Netherlands for burning in a Dutch power plant.

Gov. Sonny Perdue and RWE chief executive Fritz Vahrenholt cited the state's ample forestlands as well as its highway and railroad access to deep-water ports as reasons to locate in Georgia.

A Perdue spokesman said the company also met with North Carolina and South Carolina, and that Georgia provided a $4,000-per-employee incentive over five years.

Turning wood scrap into fuel is not a new idea in Georgia. More than three dozen alternative energy projects have been announced since 2006. Most have struggled, however.

The Waycross project is different than some others, state officials said, because the pellets are being shipped for use in Europe, rather than sent into the U.S. market.

The European market for biomass is considered ripe as utilities there seek to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels such as coal. RWE is a heavy coal user.

The project announced Wednesday might not be the last of its kind. State officials said Georgia has more than 24 million acres of forestland, and that it is growing 30 percent faster than it is being harvested.

Also, much of the state's forestland is privately owned, facilitating such deals.

Jill Stuckey, director of the state's Center of Innovation for Energy, said all of the countries under the Kyoto Protocol, which limits greenhouse gas emissions, "are looking to meet their mandates. Georgia's vast amount of biomass feedstock is the way for them to achieve those goals." The U.S. didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Stuckey said another wood pellet production facility announcement involving a U.S.-European partnership may be forthcoming.

"There's a lot more companies looking around," she said, and, "We grow trees like Iowa grows corn."