Range Fuels has been awarded a construction permit to build a100-million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia. Construction is scheduled to start this summer, with phase 1, providing a 20 mgpy capacity, due for completion in 2008. The plant will use wood waste from Georgia's forests as its feedstock.

"Cellulosic ethanol offers tremendous promise for not only the development of an alternative energy source, but also rural economic development for our state," said Sonny Perdue, Governor of Georgia. "We look forward to the construction of this plant and are hopeful this is the first of many more to come."

Range Fuels says that it has successfully tested its K2 technology on over 30 forms of biomass. The company's technology eliminates enzymes, and uses a thermo-chemical conversion process to convert the biomass to synthesis gas, and then to convert the gas to ethanol.

Depending upon the quantity and availability of feedstock, the K2 system can scale from entry level systems to large configurations, says the company. This range of system size allows placement of the K2 near the biomass source reducing transportation costs, and will allow the most appropriate size system to be deployed.

Georgia was selected for the company's first plant because of the abundance of forest refuse and the renewable and sustainable forest industry. The forests of Georgia can support up to 2 billion gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol production, according to Range Fuels.

The company is currently negotiating with the Department of Energy for grants worth up to $76M for this project.