Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards joined Strategic Biofuels LLC CEO Paul Schubert in an announcement that the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Louisiana Green Fuels, plans to develop a renewable diesel plant near the Caldwell Parish seat of Columbia. Situated on an 171-acre site at the Port of Columbia, the plant would produce up to 32 million gallons of renewable fuel annually through established refinery processes with wood waste as the feedstock. The company is completing feasibility and financing phases for the project in anticipation of a final investment decision by late 2022.
Louisiana Green Fuels would make a capital investment of at least $700 million. The company would create 76 new direct jobs and more than 400 new indirect jobs.
Strategic Biofuels reports it has raised 85% of its early-stage financing from investors in north Louisiana. In addition to the Columbia renewable diesel refinery, the company envisions the development of additional Louisiana refineries that would target production of renewable aviation fuel, as well as diesel.
“Caldwell Parish is the ideal location for our Louisiana Green Fuels plant,” Schubert comments. “It combines the required forestry waste feedstock for fuel production and the right geology for carbon sequestration within the state of Louisiana’s visionary legislative framework, which has been further strengthened by the Climate Initiative established by Governor Edwards. We are especially thankful for his signature on the recent $200 million tax-free bond allocation, which substantially advances the financing for this project.”
“Louisiana Green Fuels is an example of how our state can merge traditional and emerging forms of energy in exciting ways to address climate change,” Gov. Edwards says. “The company has engaged Justiss Oil of Jena to drill a sequestration test well that will confirm the integrity of carbon storage a mile below the earth’s surface.”
Strategic Biofuels states its renewable diesel is significantly different from biodiesel and is not subject to biodiesel’s severe blending limitations. “Renewable diesel is a high performance, low emissions, ‘drop-in’ synthetic fuel. The greenhouse gas, primarily carbon dioxide, produced by Louisiana Green Fuels will be captured and permanently sequestered in underground geologic formations, thereby preventing the captured carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.”
The site, 25 miles south of Monroe, is on an active port site with a Union Pacific rail line.
The company says the Port of Columbia site is located within one of the largest fiber baskets in the country ensuring long-term cost-effective feedstock supply; that within a 75-mile radius of the site there are more than 40% more tons of pine grown annually on private lands, mostly managed plantations, than are harvested.
The plant is expected to produce 83% renewable diesel and 17% renewable naphtha. Both renewable fuels are ‘drop-in fuels’ that are chemically identical to fossil-derived diesel and naphtha. The company says it will use gasification to convert wood waste into syngas, and that Fischer-Tropsch technology will reassemble the carbon monoxide and hydrogen syngas, followed by upgrading technology that converts the synthetic crude into transportation fuels.