Local & State Headlines

New ethanol plant planned

• Georgia's second ethanol plant locates in Turner County and should be running within two years.

Susan McCord

SYCAMORE — On a breezy hill in rural Turner County, Georgia Alternative Energy Cooperative asked the few hundred present to imagine Georgia’s second corn ethanol plant.

“If you’ll listen real close, you can hear the gentle hum of the pumps, pumping solution back and forth through that ethanol plant,” said Tift County farmer Brian Ponder, chairman of the board of the 236-member cooperative.

Puffs of white steam will rise as tractor-trailer loads of corn from nearby farms roll up to the scale, as byproducts — compressed carbon dioxide gas and a 28-percent protein dry distillers’ grain — are readied for transport out of the plant, for use at chicken processing plants and in chicken feed, he said.

“And over on (Interstate Highway) 75, there’s two semi-loads of ethanol pulling on the on-ramp. One’s heading to Atlanta, one’s going south to Tifton,” said Ponder.

The site’s proximity to transportation — Interstate 75 is a few hundred acres away and Norfolk-Southern railway passes between the site and U.S. Highway 41 — and a good deal on natural gas from the city of Ashburn led the cooperative to the site, said project manager Allen Whitehead.

A fourth factor was “the willingness of the community to make this work for us,” he said.

Turner County’s Economic Development Authority offered the cooperative a tax break — a gradually diminishing reduction in property taxes over a 20-year period — as an incentive for the facility to locate in Turner, said authority Executive Director Shelley Zorn.

Smaller than the state’s first corn ethanol plant, First United Ethanol LLC’s 100 million gallon refinery near Camilla, the facility will produce 50 million gallons of ethanol from some 18 million bushels of corn each year, Whitehead said.

Jill Stuckey, Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority’s Director of Alternative Fuels, has worked closely with about 60 of the state’s alternative fuel ventures, including C2 Biofuels and Range Fuels, cellulosic ethanol facility that will make ethanol from timber scraps, and Alterra Bioenergy near Plains, where biodiesel will be made from oilseeds, including peanuts.

While the technology to make large quantities of fuel from wood pulp or other organic matter is developing, it’s been proven in the corn ethanol refineries that dot the Midwest, Stuckey said.

“Today, it’s corn ethanol, because that’s what we know how to do,” Stuckey said. “Tomorrow, with folks like Range Fuels and C2 Biofuels, it’s going to be cellulosic.”

A spike is corn prices will even out as more growers plant corn, she said. Georgia growers doubled their corn planting last year.

“When we have a demand situation, we create more product,” she said. “Temporarily, it’s going to raise the prices a bit, but it’s all going to equal out because more people are going to be planting corn, and the price of corn drops.”

The project, near the town of Sycamore, found support from five counties, which contributed seed money before its final site was chosen, Ponder said.

The cooperative will invest more than $90 million and employ several hundred to build the facility, which will use $85 million in local products each year, he said.

The manufacture of ethanol adds value to a farmer’s crop, plus it cuts U.S. dependence on foreign oil, Ponder said.

“This is the closest that most Georgians will ever get to owning an oil well,” he said.

Whitehead introduced dozens of state and local officials who attended the event, held beside an old farmhouse, scuppernong orchard and pine forest that presently occupy the site.

Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Jay Roberts, R-Ocilla, expressed their support.

The co-op has options to buy 190 acres at the site, most of which is needed for a rail connection with the nearby Norfolk-Southern line, Whitehead said.

They hope to break ground on the project in 6-8 months, and complete construction 12-14 months later, employing about 50 between the ethanol manufacturing and carbon dioxide packing components of the business, he said.

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