Georgia Lawmakers Aim to Boost State’s Struggling Forest Products Industry

Georgia lawmakers are looking for ways to boost the state’s struggling forest industry, Capitol Beat News Service reported (8-16-24).

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 number one forestry state in the nation, a $42 billion industry responsible for 143,000 jobs. However, 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 on August 13th. “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, 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 committee.

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.