Georgia lawmakers looking to boost struggling timber industry

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ATLANTA — Georgia’s forestry industry is a victim of its own success.

Advanced genetics leading to fast-growing trees and a favorable climate have combined to make Georgia the No.-1 forestry state in the nation, a $42 billion industry responsible for 143,000 jobs.

But with pulp and paper mills going out of business in large numbers due to intense foreign competition, demand for timber is on the decline. As a result, prices for wood are down to levels not seen since the 1970s.

Those are the dynamics behind a push to find new markets for Georgia’s oversupply of wood in innovative clean energy industries ranging from cleaner aviation fuel to mass-timber building construction to electric-vehicle batteries.

“Georgia is uniquely positioned,” Marshall Thomas, president of F&W Forestry Services in Albany, told members of a state Senate study committee Aug. 13. “We can add jobs and tax base and position Georgia as a leader in the transition to a green economy.”

The Senate Advancing Forest Innovation in Georgia Study Committee was formed this year to look for ways the state can encourage investment in sustainable forest products that will generate demand in the future.

Senate President Pro Tempore John Kennedy, R-Macon, the committee’s chairman, said he saw one of those options on a state-sponsored trade mission to France last year: sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a biofuel that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 85% compared with conventional petroleum-based jet fuel.

The European Union will require commercial aircraft to burn at least 6% SAF by 2030, a percentage that will increase gradually each year until it reaches 70% in 2050.

One company active in Georgia, Lanzajet, is already producing 120 million gallons of SAF per year, Andres Villegas, president and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association, told the study committee. 

But much more is needed. Villegas said a supply of 3 billion gallons of SAF will be needed to replace fossil fuels in commercial aircraft by 2030, and 35 billion will be required by 2050.

Another innovative use of wood in its infancy is mass timber construction of either multi-family residential or office buildings made with wood to replace more carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel. The first commercial building in Georgia constructed with mass timber is at Atlanta’s Ponce City Market, made from southern yellow pine timber grown in rural Georgia.

“These types of projects allow us to connect urban and rural,” Villegas said. 

Researchers also are exploring ways to convert southern pine into anodes for electric-vehicle batteries, important components of battery cells. The state has invested $3 million into that research, said Tim Lowrimore, executive director of the Georgia Forestry Commission, a state agency that works to protect and conserve the state’s forest resources.

The study committee will consider how the state could help foster innovative uses for wood products over the course of several meetings this summer and fall.

The General Assembly has become more reluctant in recent years to approve tax credits aimed at supporting various industries because of the loss in tax revenue. But tax credits offer an opportunity to open up innovative markets that would support new forestry jobs, said Sen. Russ Goodman, R-Cogdell, a member of the study committee and chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee.

“We’re growing 50% more trees than we’re utilizing,” Goodman said. “We’ve got to create markets.”

Lowrimore said the state could be doing more to promote mass timber construction by embracing the technology for construction of public buildings.

“Why isn’t every public facility at least evaluating (mass timber)?” added Larry Spillers, chairman of the Georgia Forestry Commission’s board of directors, a tree farmer who owns 2,000 acres primarily in Crawford County.

Spillers said state policy makers shouldn’t forget about existing industries operating in the forestry space in the rush to foster innovative uses of Georgia’s wood. For example, pulp mills can be retrofitted to produce sustainable aviation fuel, he said.

“We can support our existing businesses,” Lowrimore told study committee members. “But we also have the capacity to do more. … To get where we want to be, you as state leaders have to be committed to make it happen.”

The committee is due to report its findings to the full Senate by Dec. 1.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Capitol Beat.