After a timber company makes its plywood or paper, there’s leftover sawdust and wood shavings. These leftovers are called woody biomass and in Georgia, they’re becoming a big source of renewable energy.
A Pew study ranked Georgia third in the country for converting this “woody biomass” into electricity.
“We lead the nation in the production of telephone polls. We have the largest hardwood sawmill in the United States. We have the largest recycled paper mill in North America. We have the largest wood pellet plant in the world,” says Risher Willard with the Georgia Forestry Commission.
Georgia has the most acres of forest available for commercial use in the country: almost 25 million acres. That’s more than two-thirds of the state and more and more of our forests are becoming commercialized.