Fresh Loaf

At Manuel’s Tavern on Tuesday night, there were chicken wings, some hummus, lots of beer, and a roomful of residents who were tired of Georgia’s reputation as a coal-dependent embarrassment when it comes to energy. In other words, it was a typical night at Manuel’s. But on this night, the crowd was talking with someone who says he can change the state’s filthy energy ways.

Jim Powell, the Democratic nominee for the Georgia Public Service Commission — the quasi-judicial state agency that helps determine how much it costs to keep your lights turned on and your house toasty warm — was amongst nearly 50 well wishers at the Tuesday night fundraiser held in his honor at the political pub in Poncy-Highland.

Organized by some of the city’s leading environmental activists, the benefit was one of several scheduled around the state to give Powell, a former executive with the U.S. Department of Energy, a financial advantage over his well-financed opponent on Nov. 4, Bubba McDonald.

Powell, in contrast to McDonald, has pledged not to accept contributions from  lawyers and lobbyists who represent the industries he’d regulate should he win the  general election. (”How could I be objective and make decisions on your behalf — and my behalf — if I’m taking money from them?” he asks the crowd.) While a boon for his integrity, that promise has left Powell in a lurch when it comes to cash. He’s just now getting the chance to widely distribute yard signs. Television commercials, considered one of the best ways to reach voters in any race, may prove too costly, he says.

So what does a guy who wants to run for one of the state’s most powerful — yet misunderstood — agencies  do?

(Photo courtesy Jim Powell for Georgia Public Service Commission)

(more…)

Bookmark It

The man who invented powdered peanut butter has inked a deal with the U.S. Dept. of Defense to produce oil and gasoline out of our waste.

J.C. Bell, an agricultural scientist in Tifton whom we’ve written about previously on Fresh Loaf, will build a pilot facility at Fort Stewart and several other military bases around the country to convert trash and biomass into fuel by using cloned bacteria found in — ahem — a cow’s hindquarters.

Read all about it here.

(Hat tip to Rogue109 at Peach Pundit)

Bookmark It

And they’re not even considering the wind potential off Georgia’s coast. From the office of Gov. George Ervin “Sonny” Perdue:

According to a recent Forbes article entitled “America’s Best Places For Alternative Energy,” the abundance of biomass in Georgia’s Bioenergy Corridor ranks third in the nation as a potential source of renewable energy. The article referenced the amount of privately owned forest in Georgia, more than any other state in the country, as a reason for the state’s ranking. Forbes also cited that “roughly 50 million tons of the state’s own timber end up in the state’s wood-products manufacturing plants every year” and the industry “returns nearly half of it in the form of primary mill wood debris.” Only Iowa and North Dakota ranked higher. Rounding out the top five were Mississippi and North Carolina.

“Georgia’s wealth of natural resources combined with our research institutions and a strong business climate create an ideal environment for the development of renewable energy,” said Governor Perdue. “We appreciate Forbes’ recognition of our ability to develop alternative energy sources.”

…

Georgia is at the forefront of the nation’s development of cellulosic ethanol, a non-food feedstock for the production of ethanol from pine and other wood residuals. Range Fuels broke ground on the nation’s first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Soperton on November 6, 2007. The facility is expected to be operational in 2009. In addition, the state’s research institutions including the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Georgia and the Herty Advanced Materials Development Center are providing R&D in support of cellulosic ethanol and other renewable energy alternatives.

Full press release follows after the jump.

(more…)

Bookmark It

Energy experts are saying that Georgia’s potential to become a clean-technology leader is best realized in pine ethanol. The state’s abundant arboreal resources, they argue, could give us an alternative to gasoline as well as a revenue stream.

But there’s also wind. Studies conducted by Dr. Sam Shelton of Georgia Tech discovered that breezes off the state’s coast were sufficient enough to generate power. The turbines would be located more than 12 miles from shore and beyond the horizon, far out of eyesight of landowners and beachgoers. The ocean floor is shallow enough and the proposed turbine locations are outside hurricanes’ paths and migration patterns of the endangered right whale. Problems: It costs a lot of coin to run transmission cables along the ocean floor and takes a lot of time to obtain the permits to do so.

Maybe it’ll take raising public awareness to get Georgians to tell the utilities and EMCs to invest in wind power. Maybe this European commercial showcasing how wind feels so damn lonely just blowing in this world, adrift and without a purpose, might convince us to put out the call. (Warning: There is a brief shot of Mr. Wind using his supernatural powers to momentarily lift a woman’s skirt . That sentence I just wrote makes it sound worse than it is.)

Bookmark It