l s uwhitepaper- s u r a（l s uwhitepaper年代u r）.doc

Current and planned bioenergy activities at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 Prepared for Southern Bioenergy Summit February 27-28, 2007, Washington, DC by Martin A Hjorts?, Chemical Engineering LSU, Baton Rouge, 70803 hjortso@lsu.edu, (225) 578-3058 The State and the University. In Louisiana, sugarcane, rice, soybean, cotton, corn, hay, sorghum, and wheat are grown on approximately 3.5 MM acres. These crops produce large quantities of agricultural residues such as bagasse, corn stover, and rice husks. Most of these residues are now inefficiently burnt, either in the field or for steam generation. A vigorous bioprocessing industry would utilize these resources more efficiently and with less adverse environmental impart. A wide range of energy crops is needed to create a viable biofuel industry. With too few crops, the associated value-added compounds will be overproduced, depressing their price and destroying the process economics. The diverse climatic and soil conditions across Louisiana and the location at the mouth of the Mississippi make the state well suited for cultivation and processing of energy crops to support a bioprocessing industry. The state’s chemical industry is the largest single employer in the manufacturing sector. Nearly 26,000 Louisianans are directly employed in the chemical industry at an average annual salary of $73,200, and that does not include thousands of contract and maintenance employees that work at the plants year round. The Louisiana chemical industry employees are among the best paid in the state, earning 53 percent more than the state’s manufacturing average and 206 percent more than the state’s average wage. In addition to the nearly 26,000 jobs directly created by the Louisiana chemical industry, for every chemical industry job in Louisiana, 5.2 jobs are created in the state, a total of approximately 135,000 additional jobs. In Louisiana alone, these jobs generate $5.9 billion in earnings and $125 mil