Biomass to Energy for Georgia
Innovative Energy Ventures develops projects that convert waste wood into renewable diesel, electricity and biochar. Our initial work is in Georgia, where storm-damaged timber and closed paper mills have left more low-grade wood on the ground than the state has any use for.
Georgia Has More Waste Wood Than It Can Use
When Hurricane Helene crossed Georgia in September 2024, it damaged timber across 8.9 million acres of forestland. The Georgia Forestry Commission put the loss to the state's timber resource at 1.28 billion dollars. Eighty-eight percent of the affected land was privately owned.
The market that would normally absorb low-grade wood has been shrinking at the same time. Georgia-Pacific closed its Cedar Springs operation in Early County at the end of July 2025, ending 535 jobs. One analysis put the annual cost to the southwest Georgia economy at 182 million dollars. International Paper closed its Savannah and Riceboro mills at the end of September 2025, affecting roughly 1,100 positions.
How We Convert Waste Wood Into Energy
The process is pyrolysis. Pyrolysis is an established industrial method and it is not experimental.
Wood arrives at the facility, is screened for contaminants, dried and reduced to a consistent size. It is then fed into a sealed reactor and heated in the absence of oxygen. Under heat, and with no oxygen available to it, the structure of the wood breaks apart. This is pyrolysis, and it is the same principle used to make charcoal, run continuously and under controlled conditions.
What comes off the reactor is a hot, energy-rich gas. What stays behind is a solid carbon residue. Each is handled separately from that point on.
The gas carries tars and particulates that have to be removed before it is useful, so it is cooled, filtered and conditioned until it is clean enough to work with. It then passes over a catalyst, where the gas molecules are reassembled into longer chains that condense out as a liquid diesel fuel. Part of the gas stream is diverted before this stage and used to raise power on site, which supplies much of the plant's own electrical demand and reduces what it has to draw from the grid.
The solid residue is cooled, screened and processed into biochar. A portion of that biochar can be activated, a further treatment that opens up its internal pore structure and produces activated carbon.
Every stage of this chain is in commercial use somewhere in industry today. Pyrolysis has been run at industrial scale for decades. Gas conditioning and catalytic conversion to liquid fuels are long-established processes with an operating history measured in generations rather than pilot runs. What a project of this kind does is assemble proven equipment around a feedstock that currently has no buyer, which is a different proposition from developing new technology.
Innovative Energy Ventures has committed to a commercial technology partner for this equipment.
What the Process Produces
A single facility produces four categories of output from one stream of waste wood.
Renewable diesel
A drop-in liquid fuel made from the captured gas. It substitutes for conventional diesel in existing equipment and does not require new engines or new distribution infrastructure.
Electricity
Part of the gas stream is used to generate electricity at the facility. Generating power on site from the same feedstock lowers the plant's exposure to outside energy prices.
Biochar
The solid residue left after conversion is processed into biochar. Biochar is used as a soil amendment, as a filtration medium and as a durable form of carbon storage.
Activated carbon
A portion of the biochar can be activated, a further treatment that opens up its pore structure. Activated carbon is used in water treatment, air and gas filtration and industrial purification.
Because the feedstock is wood residue that would otherwise decay, burn in the open or go to a landfill, converting it displaces fossil fuel and avoids emissions that would have occurred anyway.
For Counties, Cities and Permitting Authorities
A facility of this kind is a small industrial operation, not a utility-scale power plant. It is designed to sit near the wood rather than pull wood across the state, which keeps truck traffic local and short-haul.
For a county absorbing the loss of a mill, the questions are usually the same, and they are fair ones. What comes out of the stack. What comes in on the road. How many people work there. What happens to the site if the operator walks away. What the tax base looks like in year one and in year ten.
We would rather answer those questions early, in front of staff and elected officials, than late in a permitting process. Our position is that a project that cannot survive an informed public meeting should not be built.
What a host community gets is an outlet for wood that currently has no buyer, permanent operating jobs, contracted work for local logging and hauling businesses, taxable improvements to an industrial parcel and a reduction in the volume of woody debris going to landfill.
Innovative Energy Ventures is developing its first projects in Georgia. If your county, authority or commission wants a briefing before there is an application in front of you, use the form below and say so.
For Landowners, Loggers and Debris Contractors
The material we are built for is the material nobody else wants.
Wood we are interested in
- Storm-damaged and salvage timber
- Low-grade pulpwood with no local mill
- Logging residue, tops and limbs
- Mill residuals, sawdust, shavings and chips
- Land clearing debris and urban wood waste
- Standing dead and cull material
Wood we cannot take
- Treated, painted or preserved lumber
- Construction and demolition debris with fasteners, coatings or composites
- Material contaminated with soil, rock, metal or plastic
- Railroad ties, utility poles and any creosote or CCA treated wood
We are building the supply picture now, ahead of our first Georgia facility, and we want to hear from landowners, logging contractors, land clearing operators, sawmills and county public works departments who are holding wood with no outlet.
Tell us what you have, roughly how much and where it sits. We will tell you whether it fits.
Biomass, Renewable Fuels and Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Biomass is organic material used as an energy source. Wood, agricultural residue and municipal green waste all qualify. It is treated as renewable because the carbon released was absorbed from the atmosphere by the plant within a human timeframe, which is not true of coal, oil or natural gas.
The value in biomass has moved. For most of the last century the question was how to burn it efficiently to make heat or electricity. The question now is how to convert it into liquid fuels, because liquid fuels are where the hardest decarbonization problems sit. Heavy trucking, marine shipping, rail and aviation cannot electrify on the timeline that light vehicles can. They need a liquid molecule.
Sustainable aviation fuel is the clearest example. SAF is jet fuel produced from non-fossil sources, including used cooking oil, agricultural residue, municipal solid waste and woody biomass. It is chemically close enough to conventional jet fuel to be used in existing aircraft and existing airport infrastructure. Airlines have committed to large SAF volumes, and the constraint on delivering them is not aircraft or airports. It is feedstock and conversion capacity.
That is the broader context Innovative Energy Ventures operates in. Low-grade wood that currently has no market is one of the few feedstocks available at scale in the Southeast. Our current work is the conversion of Georgia waste wood into renewable diesel, electricity, biochar and activated carbon.
Our Route Is an Approved Pathway to Aviation Fuel
Aviation fuel cannot be made from just any process. To be used in a commercial aircraft, a fuel has to be produced by a pathway that has been formally assessed and approved, and only a small number of pathways have cleared that bar.
The conversion route used in our facilities is one of them. The same chemistry that produces renewable diesel from wood gas is, with the back end of the plant configured differently, an approved means of producing aviation fuel. That is a matter of published specification rather than opinion, and it is a meaningful distinction, because most biomass projects have no route to aviation fuel at all.
What it means is that the technology we are building around is not confined to today's diesel market. As aviation fuel demand develops, the pathway is available to us. We will say so plainly if and when that ever changes, and we will not describe a product as ours before it exists.
About Innovative Energy Ventures
Innovative Energy Ventures, LLC is a Georgia limited liability company based in Atlanta. We develop biomass to energy projects that produce renewable diesel, electricity, biochar and activated carbon, beginning in Georgia.
Our approach is to site facilities where the wood already is, to use commercially proven conversion equipment rather than first-of-a-kind technology and to work with host communities before an application is filed rather than after.
Projects are currently in development.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is biomass energy?
Biomass energy is energy produced from organic material such as wood, crop residue or green waste. It is considered renewable because the carbon released was drawn out of the atmosphere by the plant while it grew, unlike fossil fuels, where the carbon has been out of circulation for millions of years.
What is pyrolysis?
Pyrolysis is the thermal decomposition of material in the absence of oxygen. Because no oxygen is present, the material does not burn. It breaks down into a combustible gas and a solid carbon residue, both of which can be captured and used.
Does the facility burn wood?
No. The feedstock is heated in a sealed, oxygen-free reactor rather than burned in air. This is the main difference between this process and a conventional biomass power plant, and it produces a different emissions profile.
Does the facility generate electricity?
Yes. Part of the gas produced during conversion is used to generate electricity at the facility. Electricity is one of four outputs, alongside renewable diesel, biochar and activated carbon.
What happened to Georgia's timber after Hurricane Helene?
Hurricane Helene damaged timber across 8.9 million acres of Georgia forestland in September 2024, a loss the Georgia Forestry Commission valued at 1.28 billion dollars. Much of that wood remains unharvested or stacked because the low-grade timber market cannot absorb it, a problem worsened by paper mill closures across the state in 2025.
Why do paper mill closures matter to landowners?
Pulp and paper mills are the main buyers of low-grade wood. When a mill closes, the wood that used to go to it has nowhere to go, and the cost of clearing it shifts onto the landowner. Georgia lost major mill capacity in Early County, Savannah and Riceboro during 2025.
What is biochar?
Biochar is the stable solid carbon left after biomass is thermally decomposed without oxygen. It is used to improve soil structure and water retention, as a filtration medium and as a long-duration form of carbon storage, because the carbon in biochar resists breaking down for a very long time.
What kinds of wood do you accept?
Storm-damaged and salvage timber, low-grade pulpwood, logging residue, mill residuals, land clearing debris and urban wood waste. We cannot accept treated, painted or preserved wood. We cannot accept construction and demolition debris or material contaminated with soil, metal or plastic.
What is sustainable aviation fuel made from?
Sustainable aviation fuel is made from non-fossil feedstocks including used cooking oil and waste fats, agricultural and forestry residue, municipal solid waste and woody biomass. It is designed to work in existing aircraft engines and existing fuel infrastructure.
Where will your Georgia facilities be located?
Project locations are not public. We will publish site information when it is appropriate to do so. Counties, authorities and commissions that want an early briefing can contact us using the form on this page.
Contact Innovative Energy Ventures
Tell us who you are and what you are working with. We read everything that comes through this form and we respond to serious inquiries.