Southeast Texas Has Makings for Biofuels Industry

By Dan Wallach, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas

Jan. 18–Southeast Texas has just about all the ingredients needed for a vibrant biofuels industry, a consultant for the Texas governor’s office said Wednesday.

The various parts simply need assembling, said Lee Ann Woods, project manager for the state’s bioenergy initiative.

She spoke to a diverse group of about 60 industrial, agricultural, commercial and business representatives at the Mary and John Gray Library at Lamar University.

Woods told the group she had recently presented a similar program in Houston and did not draw as many people there.

“You’ve got infrastructure,” she said. “You’ve got research and technology crossover. You’ve got biomass. You’re very well positioned.”

Woods said President Bush’s next State of the Union speech is going to focus on renewable energy even more so than in last year’s speech, when he said the United States must break its oil addiction.

“We’re not going to get away from fossil fuels — ever,” she said. “But a major driver (for alternative fuels) at the federal level is the Department of Defense.”

Lamar University, for example, is involved in hydrogen fuel cell research for the Defense Department.

Woods said the U.S. departments of energy and agriculture also are pursuing biomass fuel alternatives and that several states already are involved, notably New York, Minnesota, Illinois and other corn-growing states.

However, the future of alternative energy is not in corn, she said.

The term for the more far-reaching technology is “cellulosics,” which covers a wide range of organic leftovers from harvests.

Burl Carraway, Texas A&M University assistant department head of forest resource development, said East Texas timber activity produces millions of tons of debris that otherwise must be cleared by landowners to prepare sites for replanting.

Cellulosics from that alone could provide a reliable source of raw material for a biomass refinery, he said.

“If we could collect it and chip it up, it’s zero-cost fuel. Now, it just lays there. Mostly, it’s a liability for landowners,” he said.

Ted Wilson, director of the Texas A&M Agriculture Research and Extension Center west of Beaumont, said a medium-sized biomass refinery requires about 70,000 to 80,000 acres of cropland to support it.

“We’ve got water, we’ve got transportation. I don’t know of any other place in the state with the infrastructure for this,” he said.

Woods said Gov. Rick Perry’s mandate is that research into biomass as an alternative energy supply not be simply an academic exercise, but one that yields practical results.

It should pull in not only the state’s universities but also the private sector, she said.

“If this governor does anything right, it’s economic development and growth,” Woods said. “Texas is, in many ways, behind. We are an oil and gas state. This is to position Texas as an oil and gas and energy state.”

Industrial representatives also are paying attention.

A contingent from CB&I attended the meeting. CB&I, formerly known as Chicago Bridge & Iron, which recently bought the Trinity Industries shipyard site at 850 Pine St. in Beaumont, is building the Golden Pass Liquefied Natural Gas terminal near Sabine Pass.

Jim Gillingham, vice president for Valero Energy’s regional refinery operations in Port Arthur, also attended, and said Valero is interested because it has available space. Also, as a blender of petroleum products, it sees a possible future for biomass as well as petroleum.

From the academic side, George Talbert, Lamar’s director of biorenewable energy in its engineering department, said paper mills are very close to what a biomass refinery would look like.

Jim Rich, president of the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce, said the meeting Wednesday was designed to identify interest and to begin the process of trying to compete for grants to make biomass fuel refining a reality in Southeast Texas.

Don Cotton, executive director of Lamar’s research office, will lead the effort on the academic side.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas

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