Friday, April 17, 2009
VAL WALTON
News staff writer

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions on Thursday called Hoover's conversion of wood waste into ethanol for city vehicles an important step in ending the country's dependence on foreign oil.

Sessions, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, joined U.S. Rep. Artur Davis in helping fill five of Hoover's flexible-fuel Chevrolet Tahoe police vehicles with E85 - an ethanol mix made from the city's wood waste.

Birmingham Business Journal - by Jimmy DeButts Staff

By Clifford Krauss 

Car 54, where are you? Refueling with ethanol converted from wood scraps, perhaps, if the car belongs to the police department in Hoover, Ala.

The Birmingham News reported on Tuesday that Hoover is about to receive wood-based ethanol for fuel to gas up flex-fuel police and fire vehicles. The wood scraps come from Hoover and will be processed into ethanol at a demonstration plant in nearby Livingston.

Hoover will use ethanol from wood scraps converted at Livingston startup plant in city's Chevrolet Tahoes

A Livingston plant has converted wood scraps trucked from Hoover into ethanol that will be used for the first time Thursday to fuel some of the city's police vehicles.

Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos and Gulf Coast Energy CEO and President Mark Warner hail the development as groundbreaking in the conversion of wood waste to automotive fuel on a small commercial scale and in making the west Alabama demonstration plant a leader in advanced biofuel technology that uses wood to make clean-burning fuel.

Below is an article on Gulf Coast Energy published in the January/February 2009 issue of Thicket Magazine.

http://thicketmag.com/content/?p=377

The Quest to Fuel Alabama's Future
If rural Alabama sees growth in the coming decades, it may be thanks sustainable fuels being grown there today.
By Todd Keith
Photos by Jason Wallis

"This can absolutely be a renaissance time for rural areas in Alabama and the business of agriculture. But you have to create an infrastructure that can effectively deliver the energy source to the consumer. It is a chicken and egg thing." Larry Fillmer, Executive Director of Auburn University Natural Resources Management and Development Institute.

In the deep, dark industrial recesses of an old abandoned lumber mill in Livingston, the future is being born. Maybe. Hopefully.

December 2008 - Gulf Coast Energy, Inc. announces the election of Mr. Stanley R. Pearson to their Board of Directors. 

Stanley R. Pearson is a chemical engineer, inventor, and patent holder and is the inventor and developer of the biomass gasification technology utilized by Gulf Coast Energy.  He is the founder and driving force behind his company Pearson BioEnergy/Pearson Technology and has assembled a world class staff to promote his world class technology that is capable of solving our nation’s energy problems.  Mr. Pearson worked for over 30 years for Dow Chemical Company where he quickly rose up the ranks in manufacturing and R&D.  His responsibilities at Dow gradually moved in the direction of power generation and energy and culminated in being assigned responsibility to build a coal gasification plant in Louisiana – a seven year project.  Subsequently, Mr. Pearson took early retirement, formed Pearson BioEnergy/Pearson Technology, and since 1990 has focused all of his energy and efforts into the development and patenting of the world’s most efficient biomass (and other material including coal and MSW) gasification process into liquid fuels including ethanol but more significantly synthetic gasoline and synthetic diesel as well where he has focused his most recent attention, among others.  Mr. Pearson’s technology is the most advanced, most efficient, and most robust available in the alternative fuels market place.  He has trialed dozens of feedstocks and has advanced energy and heat efficiency more than any other technology available.  He has obtained more than ten patents and has several more pending, during the course of development.  He has been recognized by several government and academic organizations as having developed the best process in alternative fuels and representing a substantial piece of the collective energy solution.  Mr. Pearson graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Chemical Engineering and was a member of the Alpha Chi Sigma fraternity.