Strategic Biofuels, a developer of negative carbon footprint biofuels plants, announced today that its Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF) project has been issued an Air Permit from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
After a comprehensive technical review and public comment period, DEQ determined that the project, located in Caldwell Parish Louisiana, will not have an adverse impact on local air resources, signaling another milestone to advance the world’s lowest carbon footprint liquid fuel plant, according to a news release.
The facility will be classified as a “synthetic minor” and will be subject to all applicable state and federal regulations, including the National Ambient Air Quality Standards
“Securing the Air Permit for the integrated facility is a significant development for our project,” said Paul Oesterreich, Senior Vice President of Project Development, Strategic Biofuels. “The permit application for our facility is the first of its kind in Louisiana to be reviewed by the DEQ. We greatly appreciate the design innovation brought by Hatch to drive down the emissions from the integrated facility and the diligence from Eagle Environmental Services our environmental consultant, in shepherding the application through the regulatory review process.”
The LGF project integrates three key elements that through key engineering innovation, led by Hatch, has the ability to reduce the total emissions by 70 percent below the allowable limit if each of the facilities were operated independently. The three project components include a biorefinery converting forestry waste to renewable fuel; biomass-fired “green energy” power plant for the entire facility; and carbon sequestration complex to permanently store the carbon dioxide captured from both.
Securing the Air Permit builds on the significant recent advancement of the LGF project’s US EPA Class VI well permit application, which the EPA has deemed as “administratively complete” and includes the extensive data collected from the LGF Class V Stratigraphic Test Well, the thorough subsurface mapping of the region, and state-of-the-art reservoir, geo-mechanical, and plume expansion modeling, according to the release. Strategic Biofuels previously announced that it has entered into an agreement with SLB, a global technology company, to provide carbon sequestration services for LGF.
